A Human Heart
by topassthetime
Summary: The sorcerer was said to have no face, no heart, and no soul - but he was her only hope.
1. Every Advantage

She whispered frantic prayers to herself as she followed the eunuchs along the cold majesty of the palace hall. They paid her no mind. Ella was a slave and an infidel in the Persian court, and in nine years had done nothing to warrant notice outside the confines of the harem. The women of the harem had long ignored her as being slightly mad – she spent the first year as a deaf-mute with glazed eyes before their language became comprehensible to her European ears – and the whispered English prayers were an old habit. She focused her eyes on the intricate patterns of the inlaid marble floor at her feet as they ventured further and further from the harem, following the weaving lines of black and white marble until she was dizzy.

_Dear Lord in Heaven, if it so pleases – give me strength to – please, please…_

They had not left her alone to prepare, but attended her closely as she dressed in the silken robes she would be presented in. Ella had wondered if they knew what she was thinking, the thoughts she was still thinking. She knew her father would have died before he would have let her face this horror…her mother, too…but they could not save her now. She thought of them and her words crashed together in a horrible rush, her breath catching brokenly. The eunuchs in front of her turned a corner down a narrower hall, and she fell back to the prayer her mother had taught her so long ago. _Our Father, who art in heaven…hallowed be thy name…_

She ended the prayer as they entered the magician's chamber, her lips mouthing silent words as she trained her eyes on the floor. ".._the power… and the glory…". _

"_Forever_, they say;" a man's voice finished coldly. _In English._

Ella felt a deep chill sink into her body as she slowly looked up. The sorcerer stood in the center of the room, dressed in back. His face was shrouded in a black velvet mask, but she could hear the disdain in his voice as he continued,

"_but God is dead, girl, so I would not expect him to come to your aid at the present." _

One of the eunuchs stepped forward. "His most esteemed majesty, Light of Heaven, Ruler of- "

"every ridiculous title imaginable; yes – the shah obviously sends this half-witted girl. For what purpose?" the magician snarled.

The eunuch frowned as he and his fellow escort inched towards the chamber doors. "She is a gift from the majesty – a wife from the royal harems."

"A _gift_ indeed…" the magician replied. He stood very still, his head turned towards her. Ella realized she could not see his eyes in the shadows of the black silk. The eunuch beside her shifted his weight from foot to foot, then shoved her forward. She quickly stepped back, only to be pushed forward again by her retreating escorts.

"You no doubt know why you are here, and object," the magician addressed her flatly in Farsi. "Before you waste my time and your life, consider this: to refuse me is to go against the wishes of the shah himself, and will be punished by death."

_The Sultana's new sorcerer shows no mercy – he is just barely human – no face, no heart, and no soul. _Ella remembered the harem girls whispering nervously when the sorcerer first arrived at the court. _Already, so many are dead…and in such horrible ways…_ Ella knew of the terrible fates of those who angered the shah…she had seen many of them first hand.

"I will make the choice _easy_ for you," he added quietly, fiercely, and in English now. "_Think_. Surely the rest of your life is worth this one night. Perform your duty, and I will release you in the morning. You may go where you like – I will…compensate…you for your troubles. You could go far away from here"

She could not help staring now. _Why would he lie?_ Surely he realized he already had every advantage… The Sultana would kill her immediately before she saw her "gift" released. Besides, it had been years since an English ship had docked in the shah's harbors, and no guide would take her west – Ella knew too well the slavers who prowled the roads, and she was no longer a child. _He was toying with her… _

"I promise" he added, absurdly, as if it might help. He seemed anxious, suddenly, although he had barely moved. "I swear. Don't be stupid – they will kill you. Most likely after they passed you around whatever scum they can find, and definitely after you will have wished they had."

A jolt of horror passed through her body as she realized he was most likely right. "Will you remain in Persia when the palace is finished?" she asked softly.

"When the palace is finished, I will again be looking for new projects worthy of my time." He made a sudden, impatient gesture, and switched back to Farsi. "I have given you your choice. Decide quickly, before I decide for you."

Ella could not speak. It was a game – whatever she 'decided' surely, surely the outcome would remain the same… Even if by some miracle he released her as he promised, the outcome would be the same…

"Take her away," the sorcerer spat violently, jolting her out of her thoughts.

"NO!" She fell onto the floor in a bow, her forehead strangely warm against the cool tiles. "I will stay…I will stay, but…"

He turned towards her, tensed. "You have a _condition_?"

She replied to him in English. "When you leave Persia, take me with you, take me home, to England.

"That is your condition?"

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

He tilted his head slightly. "When I leave, I shall take you to England." In Persian he added, "You agree to this?"

"If you swear it to be so, I agree," she whispered.

He nodded sharply, suddenly to the men behind her. "Leave us."

She felt numb as she heard them turn and close the door. She looked up at the sorcerer who stood before her, impassive eyes on her own, and an unseen hand clenched down upon her heart and lungs. They were alone.

He took a quick step forward, crouched before her on one knee in a motion so fast and fluid that she had to remind herself that even in Persia, _sorcery was only an illusion…_

He reached a hand towards her face, drawing his fingers along her jawline with a whisper-soft brush of his fingertips, trailing them down across the pulse that pounded painfully in the contours of her neck. _Surely, the gossips of the harem were wrong, had exaggerated the number of dead…_

He brought the other hand to her neck, cradling her face. His hands began to shake as his fingers traced over the curve of her cheek.

_…and the horrible ways in which they died. _

She was suddenly aware of the sound of ragged breaths in the still of the evening. Was it she or the sorcerer who breathed so brokenly? She couldn't tell.

He took his hands from her face and rose suddenly to his feet, his eyes alight with a strange sort of electricity. _Perhaps they do burn, as rumor says. They are as yellow as flame…_

He spoke to her in English, and her foolish heart jumped at the familiar cadence before shrinking underneath the words. "The washroom is through that door," he gestured. "If you need…anything."

She swallowed hard. "I have been…prepared."

"The bedroom is over here," he indicated with a nod of his head. He hesitated for a moment, then took a step towards it, looking back at her.

_By next morning_, she thought, _I will be a prostitute and dead. _

Her eyes welled up with tears and she blinked stubbornly. She had not cried when they told her of her appointment, she had not cried as she washed and dressed and did her hair, she had not cried when she entered the room and first realized all was lost and that she would never see her home again.

The sorcerer noticed immediately.

"I gave you a choice and agreed to your condition," he said bitterly, glaring at her from behind the black mask. His voice rose, the words rushing together. "Why are you sobbing now? Have I hurt you? If you have changed your mind, you are free to leave!"

She shook her head, and tried to steady her voice. "No."

"Then pray explain yourself…or, perhaps, that is not entirely necessary, is it?"

_ Explain yourself_…the words reverberated around her mind, and suddenly the long hours of waiting, the fear, and sorrow of all of Persia hit her with a mad jolt of fury. _Explain yourself_…

"I am crying," she cried, the anger in her voice blending with her tears and becoming fierce, "because I do not want to be a prostitute, and I do not want to die!"

"You are saying," he stated incredulously, "that you do not wish to lie with me."

He was thinking, she was sure, of his previous prediction of her death at the hands of the Sultana, and his voice sounded accusatory and cheated - like a petulant child. "With anyone!"

"Ever?" He was mocking her now.

"No!"

He laughed suddenly, a harsh sound that echoed off the walls of the room. "This is a fine joke; the Sultana has outdone herself - sending a praying, _principled _odalisque to an infidel…"

"I am not _the odalisque_," she whispered quietly.

"What did you say?"

"I am not," she repeated, louder, "t_he odalisque_. I am not a _thing_ or an object, I have a name." She lowered her voice and drew herself up to her full height, angry at herself. _As though ten years in Persia had taught her nothing! _"Pray forgive my foolishness."

She started to walk past him, into the bedroom, when a hand clamped around her arm.

"No."

Her heart stopped in her throat. She had overstepped her bounds in her temper, in her frustration and in speaking her own language. It took her back, back to when she had been a girl, when women spoke freely. But she was in Persia.

He must have noted the painful way the blood drained from her face, but he merely walked to another door and opened it. "You will sleep here tonight. Alone."

"You are sending me back?"

"No, not tonight or ever. I won't have that bitch make you into her own personal spy."

Ella filed away the description of the Sultana, and spoke cautiously. "We are still agreed?"

He sighed harshly. "Yes, yes…I will take you home…but for tonight you may sleep with your virtue intact."

"I - thank you, sir."

He nodded once, shortly, then disappeared into his own bedroom, and leaving her standing alone in the great room of the chamber.


	2. Common Knowledge

Ella slept curled up against the closed door. If he decided to enter there was nothing she could do to stop him, but it was the only way she could hope to sleep. She finally dozed off when the sun started to rise, and woke up stiff and tired a few hours later. She sat up reluctantly, blinking in the light streaming in from the elaborately latticed windows, and surveyed the room.

Despite the sorcerer's great and terrible talents, there was no evidence of it in this room. It looked deceptively normal, innocuous in the morning sun. Just a small, cluttered study, like any other in the world, with the only evidence of Persia the curving windows and the walled courtyard beyond. A desk sat in the corner of the room, buried under stacks of books in heavy leather bindings and piles of rolled blueprints and drawings. She walked to them as quietly as she could, frowning at the scribbled letters of the documents before searching through the gilded titles of the books. The writing was in French, a language she recognized though she had long since forgotten the lessons her mother had given her so many years ago. The books were a Babel of nationalities. A few she picked out as Italian; the rest, she did not recognize.

A door slammed shut in the great room, and Ella backed away from the desk and its contents.

_The sorcerer had changed his mind, and sent for the guards. _

She froze as the heavy steps of multiple feet clattered across the floor of the chamber outside, holding her breath in the still silence of the office. The hushed voices of the kitchen slaves rose, then fell silent as Ella tried to catch her breath. They were gone almost instantaneously, with no lingering as they had done in the harem. Ella looked longingly at the window before steeling herself towards the door. _It would be better to go out than to let him grow tired of waiting and come in. _

The sorcerer was sitting at the table looking over blueprints when she entered the great room.

"Good morning, sir," she offered quietly in English, sinking to the floor in a deep, customary bow.

He gave her a raking glance, and scowled. "There is food on the table when you want breakfast."

Ella found a place at the end of the table where a small space was open and uncovered by the plans, and took a piece of fruit from the platter nearby. The sorcerer continued to look at his papers as the minutes ticked by.

_It is too quiet._

She felt exposed and vulnerable her wrinkled silks. The night's truce seemed strange and unsure in the morning, and she wondered if it was all a prelude, a lulling decoy against the true horror to come.

_The Sultana loved surprises._

She studied the sorcerer surreptitiously, though he appeared to take no notice of her. He was thin, surely, but muscled – she remembered how his hand had closed like a vise about her arm. Images of one of the first 'executions' swarmed her mind: the hiss of the catgut, the sickening crunch followed by the prisoner's collapse to the floor, framed by a widening puddle of bright red blood. The sorcerer had waited until the very last minute to jump away from the prisoner's knife and deliver the blow. The poor fool had thought he had won – the surprise on his dying face was terrible to see. Her stomach began to knot and clench like the twisting of a rope under too much pressure. His hands caught her eye as he expertly unfurled a second print, comparing it to the first. They were unexpectedly thin and as pale as her own. The Sultana's _foreign_ magician.

"What are you looking at!" he growled suddenly, the golden eyes glaring down on her.

Ella bit her lip to keep from gasping, and dropped her eyes to her hands. She had not been as discreet as she thought. The sorcerer stared at her, his mouth set in a straight line under the edge of his mask.

"Pray forgive me, sir."

"You can eat your food – it won't improve by holding it. You are looking at something - tell me, what do you want to know?" the words bristled in the air like a threat.

"Sir, where are you from?"

"France, but that is common knowledge."

She searched frantically for a topic that would please him before settling on the convenient blueprint.

"What are you building?"

"Today, a terrace for the new palace." When she did not respond, he continued, "You do not have as much to say this morning, do you?"

"I did not believe you wished to speak."

"I don't – and will you eat your damn apple, already? Look," he said, snatching it out of her hands and taking a large bite out of one side. "It's fine." He handed it back to her. She took a bite out of the other side, and chewed unhappily. She hadn't thought to wonder if the fruit was poisoned.

"Sir, may I ask where you learned to speak English?"

"France. What did the Sultana ask you to tell her?" he demanded.

"Nothing, sir! I never see the Sultana – the eunuchs came to me and brought me here." Ella fervently hoped that the Sultana did not ask for her – little good came from the Sultana's attention. After all, had she not been outside near the fountains the other day when the Sultana passed by, the Sultana might still have no idea that she existed. There were many women in the harem who were more beautiful, who danced or sang and would be a greater honor as a mistress, and even more who were out of the Sultana's favor and would have been convenient prey for sport.

The sorcerer seemed unsatisfied by her answer, but did not ask more. He disappeared for a moment into his quarters before reappearing with an overcoat and another set of prints. "Stay in these rooms and you should be fine. Leave, and you can face the Sultana on your own."

Ella frowned. Avoiding the Sultana when she wished to see you was not nearly that simple, especially for a slave. "Sir?" she asked as he turned to leave, "What if the Sultana asks for me?"

He flung the answer over his shoulder without pausing. "I will tell them that as you are mine, I shall do with you what I like."


	3. Fire

The girl's prayers burned like fire in his mind.

_Stupid girl - your God is nothing._

It had been a shock to see her, a pale, living reminder of the Europe he hated in the middle of the shah's eastern palace. Erik had given up on mercy, and promised the girl none. He was not responsible for righting the injustices of the slaves of Persia.

Even in her desperation she was pretty – slight, with wide eyes and long golden brown hair, wrapped up like a present in silver silk and presented in circumstances so absurd it hardly seemed real. He had not wanted to see her die, even by her own stupid choice. Her skin had been smooth when he touched it, _and she did not pull away_. The triumph of it drew him in like a drug and made him bold – as sure as any young man in the palace.

Then she had begun to cry, and the illusion was broken. It shattered again in the morning as she sat uncomfortably at the table with her wary eyes and still hands. His own years in captivity sat heavily in the back of his mind, but he refused to think of them as he thought of the girl. It had taken months, but he had finally beaten it back during waking hours. He was powerful in Persia, and feared. The child who had cringed and trembled at gypsy fairs was dead. Power was as liberating as it was intoxicating.

_This bargain has to be more than she could hope for from anyone else! _

He would fulfill his part of the agreement, and she would fulfill hers. It was perfectly fair. She could not expect more.

Erik glared at the blueprints of the palace as tradesman and slaves scuttled around him, careful to keep their distance. A crash sounded behind him, and he whirled around to find three masons frozen around a pile broken tile and stone.

"If you keep breaking things instead of building them you would better serve the shah in the mines," he threatened darkly. The men cringed, scraping out frantic apologies as they ran to find slaves to remove the debris.

Her prayer annoyed him. If she found her situation as drastic as she claimed, she should have realized that evidence proved her Almighty was not as concerned about her fate as she hoped. Especially a god who would leave her in the hands of the Sultana. He swore under his breath. He would gladly use every torture he had ever created on the Sultana, one by one in a slow, thorough succession. _No – for her, I would create new ones…_

She had known exactly where to aim this barb – as she said earlier, _men_ were never so busy as to be completely blind to a woman. No, that type of restraint required a dogged stubbornness and the helpful, daily reminder that no woman would willingly remain in a room he occupied. And of all the girls to send she had sent this one, with her pale cheeks and pointless prayers. He believed her when she said she had not been told to spy. The girl herself was the weapon.

But…the palace _would_ be finished soon, and the girl's guess was correct. He would leave. And maybe… surely day by day her home would call out to her a little more strongly. She would know he was leaving, and one night she would come willingly – not with dead eyes or tears. She would think of her home, and it would light up her face like a lover's. If she wished to curse him for it later, she would do it from England.

The apartments were silent when he returned that evening, He stood in the great room for a moment, eyes narrowed, and waited for the girl to show herself.

She had left, he decided after a minute, by one means or the other. If she returned to the harem she was as good as dead, and there was little chance of an escape through the walled courtyard. Of course, that did not mean she hadn't attempted it. The thought irritated him to an irrational extent, and he walked to the study to see if she still wandered in the yard or had already been picked up by the palace guards.

He found her cross-legged on the floor near the dying light of a window, one of his books spread carefully in her lap. Her entire body leaned over it, sinking into the pages as though by sheer force of will she could have disappeared through the text into the world beneath her fingertips. Her face was soft, unconscious of the fading sun, the hard floor, and his presence; her hands were nearly reverent as she gently turned the pages.

"I see you found something to occupy your time."

She cringed violently, like a dog preparing for a blow.

_She was afraid. _

He studied her face, the small Celtic nose, light eyes and soft brown hair. An unremarkable face, and perfect in its normalcy. Suddenly he wondered what her face had looked like as a child, in a group of children; how her features would have distorted and twisted while gazing through the bars of the gypsy cage. Hate rose up like bile in his throat, and he balled his fists at his sides.

"I suppose you've heard of the plans I have for anyone who touches my things without permission," he began cruelly. _If she wants terror, I will give her a reason. _Her eyes went blank, like a mask, and he pressed harder. "The only question is what would best fit the crime. It's lucky for you that atlases don't suggest many punishments - we could drown you at sea, but that would be very inconvenient."

Her head jerked up like the snap of a plumb line against a mason's wall. The fairs grew fainter in his mind. He was feared throughout Persia, the court's own Angel of Death. He noted with smug triumph that her eyes were blazing now.

"You -you do not live up to your reputation." She was on her feet in an instant, and nearly shoved the book into his hands. A map of the world was stretched out over two pages, illustrated in quadrant. She bit out her words. "Obviously, I should be drawn and quartered."

_She was clever_… "We should tell the Sultana about your talent," he said with easy sarcasm. " I could return my time to my work on the palace and you could take over my other duties."

He watched as her eyes went wide with horror, and did not stop her as she ran out of the study. Erik lingered for nearly an hour before leaving the study, absently flipping through the pages of the atlas. He knew the girl would be in the great room – there was nowhere else to go.

_For either of us._

Erik found her sitting on a chair at the table, her hands folded tightly in her lap. He felt his shoulders sag slightly, the anger crumpling away and leaving a cold, dreary resentment in its place. Of course, she believed he would not hesitate to kill her. Hadn't he just told her he would? He noticed for the first time that she had changed out of her revealing silks into a plainer outfit– the servants must have brought the clothes he had asked for.

"Since I have gone to the trouble of clothing you, I think it would be good to keep you alive for a time," he told her, his voice ringing through the stillness of the room and sounding too loud. Her eyes flickered up to his, but her voice remained detached.

"Thank you, sir."

Something vaguely resembling guilt reared its head, and he continued uncomfortably, "You are free to find something to fill your time with. Anything in the study and in here is at your disposal."

She thanked him once more in that empty voice, but did not retrieve anything. The next day he noticed that the books remained exactly as he had left them, down to the dust settling on the covers. She had not so much as touched them.

When the Sultana eventually cornered him to ask about the 'gift', he thought of this even as he snapped out the curt answer that he hoped would end the conversation. It could not only be fear that kept the girl from looking at the books – she had been in the apartment for several days now, with nothing to do to pass the hours. The atlas nagged at his mind. It was a volume he had kept on a whim, illustrated only moderately well by an unknown cartographer and written in Latin. It predominately covered southern Europe and parts of the east, mapping out popular shipping and trade routes. There were much more interesting books in his collection: medical texts in Latin and Farsi, a book detailing the finer points of architecture in Italian, and a number of volumes in French he had acquired to fill his spare time at the Russian fairs. The atlas had only one picture of England, close to the beginning.

The girl did not speak now as she had the first night and day. She was still and respectful, sitting like an silent condemnation in his great room and lingering like a ghost in his mind. He had nothing he could say to her: his mind went blank in an irritating way when he searched for the appropriate words, and he did not know what he would speak of, besides.


	4. Ink

_I have been here three weeks. _

The sorcerer had not killed her, nor had the Sultana sent her men to drag her to her death in the middle of the night – at least not yet. _It helped_, Ella reflected, _that I finally managed to find my years of training from the harem. _Her eyes were calm, her voice was soft. When she spoke, she spoke in Farsi and he answered in kind. They spent their limited time together in an uncomfortably polite silence. It was a strained truce, but it held.

She was both relieved and worried that the magician had not mentioned their arrangement. The longer they waited, the more she worried – there was no guarantee that he would not grow tired of waiting, rape her, and turn her out to the Sultana for spite. She almost wished he had not stopped her that first night – it could all be over now, just a horrible memory. It was nerve-wracking, but she could not bear to initiate their bargain. He was not a patient man, but the delay did not seem to anger him just yet. And Ella watched him carefully.

_He takes tea in the mornings. _

_He dines in the apartment in the evening. _

_He eats ravenously, despite being so thin. _

_He sleeps very little and lightly. _

_If asked, he will speak of the palace and his plans – it is generally a safe topic, and a good choice on days he returns to the apartments in a poor temper. _

_If he has visited the court, he will return in a poor temper._

_He says little about the Sultana, none of it good and all of it far too freely spoken. _

_He has no visitors. _

_He swears in French._

It was a small bank of knowledge, but it was a start. Covered with the black mask, his face was no help - Ella learned to listen to his steps as he entered the great room for hints of his mood each night, to watch the lines of his shoulders and hands to guess the tenor of the coming day in the mornings.

_It is a time-consuming task, but it is not as though I have many other demands on my days._

And despite her study, he continued to surprise her.

_It could be a bribe,_ _but what could he want that he has not already been promised?_

It seemed something like pity, but Ella had not thought the Sultana's sorcerer capable of such an emotion.

He had left early one morning, before breakfast was served. She awakened to the tentative knock of the kitchen slaves at the door, surprised that he was not already up and dressed for the day. As the hours stretched on and his door remained closed, she finally realized that he had left before she had woken.

He returned in the evening at his usual time, covered with the dust of the construction site and loaded down with a package of books. He dumped them onto dining table where she sat stabbing her way through a meaningless alteration on a garment. She glanced up momentarily with a polite greeting, but gave the volumes no notice. The sorcerer frowned.

"These are in English," he said shortly.

"Sir?"

He made a quick gesture towards the haphazard pile, and spoke in English. "These are in English. An atlas, a history, _Richard V_ and _MacBeth_. You can read your own language, correct?"

"Yes, I can read."

"Good. They are for you, to pass the time."

"I- thank you," she stammered.

The sorcerer seemed satisfied with her response, and thumbed through one of the volumes. "What do you do all day, anyway?"

"There are two thousand, five hundred, and eighty tiles in the floor of the great room," Ella replied without hesitation. It was true – she had counted them several times. She had no desire to tell him she also spent hours analyzing his mood, or of the times she thought of her home and how she had examined (_but not touched!_) every item in the great room for some clue about her captor. "I also watch the birds in the courtyard."

He handed the book to her. "This should be more entertaining."

Ella pulled the book towards her, and hurriedly flipped to the first page. _Richard V_ stared back at her in heavy copperplate print. The letters swam before her eyes and then righted, sorting themselves into words and sentences.

"Thank you," she said sincerely, "I haven't read anything since I left home."

He left her with her treasures for the rest of the evening, undisturbed and blissfully submersed in the words she had so carefully preserved inside her mind.

"Do the books suit you?" he asked her when she emerged from her room the next morning, again in English.

"Yes, thank you. I am reading _Richard V_ now. Where did you find them?" she added curiously.

"Sometimes book sellers come through the city."

"From Europe?"

"No – the local sellers trade and sell the books from others, who trade and sell from others." He looked at her closely. "Have you ever seen the market?"

Ella remembered the terrifying crush of bodies, smells, and shouts as the slaver had pulled her through the streets. She had not know what had frightened her more – the thought of being pulled along by this horrible man to an unknown destination, or the fear of being swallowed up by the crowds entirely and lost. "Only once."

"Do you like the atlas?"

"Yes, it is quite beautiful. The trade routes are well-mapped."

"Is that how you came to Persia?"

Ella froze, and searched for the shortest response that might satisfy him. "I came by boat."

"What were you doing traveling here?"

"I was not traveling to Persia – and I was with my parents."

The sorcerer paused a moment, and she quickly took the opportunity to re-direct the conversation. "How did you come to Persia?"

"I crawled out from under a rock," he said dryly.

"Before you came to Persia, where were you? It is a long distance between France and here."

Ella waited for several long moments as he considered her question in a guarded silence.

"I came to Persia along the Black Sea, from Russia."

"What does it look like?"

"The Black Sea? It looks like water."

"Russia, the journey, and Persia to the north. What is it like?" she could not help asking. In nine years, she had not seen outside the palace walls.

"The Black sea is very wide, and very beautiful – the waves crest as tall as a man on the eastern borders. Russia is cold, the journey is long, and the northern corner of Persia looks very much like it does here, but with more mountains."

"What are the people like?" she asked curiously.

"They are like people everywhere," he replied, his voice suddenly cold. "Stupid and useless."

Ella waited a moment, then asked "Did you like _Richard V_ as much as the prior plays?"

"No, but it was fairly good. If I find the others, I will get them, too. You should read _MacBeth_ next - it is excellent."


	5. Blood

One night the sorcerer did not come to the apartment until early in the morning. Over the past month he sometimes returned late in the evening covered with dust from the construction site, sometimes with the wafting odor of the ḡalyān swirling around him, and other times he came in smelling faintly of sweat, and no clues to his whereabouts. He did not volunteer where he would be, and Ella never asked.

He was especially late this evening, and she had finished _Richard V_ by lamplight and moved on to _Macbeth_. The sorcerer picked books like a man, she mused – all wars and ghosts and adventure. _Macbeth_ was thrilling – in her mind she could see the triumphant announcement of victory, the evil, craggy witches, the cold ambition of Lady Macbeth – and the hours slipped away.

Perhaps it was the accusing ghosts, but she jumped when the sorcerer finally opened the apartment door, a sudden shriek of surprise that echoed through the apartment before she clasped her hands over her mouth. When he stepped into the light and she saw him fully, she shrieked again.

He was covered in blood.

"Be still!" he hissed, shutting the door quickly. "Why aren't you asleep?"

"I am always awake when you come in. What happened?"

"The Sultana was bored."

Visions of the Sultana's 'amusements' flashed into her mind, and before she could stop herself she asked, "Is it your own blood?"

"Some of it. Luckily I was the only one who noticed." The sorcerer double locked the doors, and sat heavily on the edge of one of the couches as he worked off his overcoat with one arm. The other he held stiffly to his side. When the coat was off, she saw the curving gash in his shoulder, back, and upper arm he had been concealing. The crumpled white shirt sleeve was stained crimson down to his wrist, where the color had soaked his cuff and trickled lazily down between his fingers. He cursed, pressing the coat back against the wound.

"Are the others dead?"

"I am alive – what do you think?" He flexed his fingers, winced, and looked at her stonily. "Go to bed."

Ella obeyed reluctantly. From her room she heard a rustling of boxes, bottles clinking, and the soft click of locks. When all had been silent for some time she stepped out into the great room.

The sorcerer lay on one of the low cushions along the side of the room, his coat thrown haphazardly over his damaged shoulder. The tense energy he carried through the lines of his body was gone now, replaced with a languorous sprawl out of character with the pain she had seen before. It was a moment before he noticed her.

"You did not go to bed," he observed softly. The words were strangely fluid, melting into one another almost like a song. "Very well, then. Have you come to seduce me?" he asked with a short laugh. Behind the mask, his eyes had widened unnaturally to reveal hazy black pools banded by thin bands of mellow gold.

"No." _His voice is beautiful, as they said, _she noted with surprise. She ignored the dig, sinking down to the floor across from him and folding her legs beneath her. "Does it hurt very much?"

"It's fine now. Have you ever tried opium?"

"No."

"Would you like some?"

"No, thank you. Sir, you should bind your arm so the bleeding will stop. Would you like me to find some bandages?"

"I will later." The sorcerer stared blankly into space, and Ella bit her lip unsure of whether to try to help or to leave him to his drug and his thoughts. _The bleeding seems to have slowed – perhaps it had not been as serious as it seemed? _The sorcerer interrupted her debate, focusing his amber eyes on hers again. "How did you come to Persia? You would not tell before."

"I… My father owned several trade ships, and loved to sail," she said falteringly. She looked at the lamp on the table, its flame dancing in the globe and sending long shadows across the darkened room. "I've never told _anyone_, because it wouldn't have mattered. There was a bad storm, and the ship failed – I don't understand what happened, but one moment we were there, and the next my father was trying to untie the lifeboats. He and the crew freed them, but at the last minute he slipped on the deck and fell overboard when the ship rolled. I don't know what happened then, but suddenly my mother was gone, too, and when the storm was over I was alone with some of the deck hands in a lifeboat. They nominated one of them to put me on a ship headed west since my parents were gone, and arrange for someone to claim me. I had a pretty ring that was my grandmother's, and a nice wool coat. The slavers offered him a good price, and it would have been expensive and troublesome to find someone to take me back to England, with no guarantee that anyone would compensate him for his efforts. The slave traders thought I would bring the best price at the palace because I was different, and brought me here. I came when I was ten."

"How long have you been here?"

"Nine years." He was silent again, staring off into the distance. "Why are you in Persia? You can't have come for this," she asked, indicating the bloody coat.

"I was invited to come and submit a plan for a palace. I wanted to make something the whole world would notice. Do something besides build retaining walls and entertain idiots with a few magic tricks and a spectacle."

"Do you like it here?"

"Sometimes," he shrugged sadly. "It is better than a lot of places. The palace is beautiful – it's the best thing I've ever done."

"Then why the opium?"

"It's different now than it was at the beginning," he said quietly. "You don't like it here."

"It's not home."

"Who are you going back to?"

"I- I don't know. My parents are dead, and my grandparents were frail when we left. I had an uncle who lived in India. But I have to go back – I can't stay here. I have to go home."

"There's no such thing, you know. Just places."

"What places will you go after we leave?"

"I don't know yet – I'll decide then. Go on and go to bed. I'm going to dress this. Don't worry," he quipped, "I don't intend to bleed out and cheat you out of your trip."

In the morning the arm was bound close to his side, and he was in shirtsleeves. Even through the bandages, the crimson stain curving around his shoulder and back spread and grew steadily throughout the day. He stayed in the rooms the next day, and the day after, pacing like a panther in a cage. The second night Ella was awakened by a crash of broken glass, flying books, and obscenities. He stood leaning over the table on his good arm, still cursing, when she walked in.

"Are you alright?"

"How, pray tell, am I supposed to work like this? _La chienne est d'enfer!" _he seethed.

"Is it very bad?

He swore again. "Bad enough."

"Did you ask a doctor to look at your back? It still bleeds – the wound is not closing."

"No, I know more than these doctors," he said condescendingly.

"Perhaps, but even a contortionist would have trouble sewing up a wound at that angle," she retorted. "You need someone to stitch it."

"It's not worth it - demons don't bleed," he muttered under his breath. He looked at her, his eyes suddenly appraising. He disappeared into his own room for a few minutes before re-appearing with a small towel in hand. As he opened it she saw a length of thread, a small vial, a black case, and a needle. "Do you have a strong stomach?"

"_No_," she protested.

"Than get a bowl to vomit in. I'm going to show you how to do an interrupted stitch – we'll use eight to close up the cut."

Ella noticed a small, bloody piece of cotton tied to his lower arm. His eyes, sharp just moments before, had dilated slightly, and his breathing was calm and even. He sat down and picked up a scalpel from the case, and expertly cut a stitch from a smaller, healing wound on his lower arm.

"You will want to do an interrupted stitch, like these, which means that you finish each stitch separately. Take this much skin on each side," he demonstrated quickly, " and pull it tight enough to join the edges tightly, but not so tight that the skin turns white or pulls. The seam should be as deep as it is wide." He finished of the stitch, then re-threaded the needle and placed it before her with the vial of alcohol. "It's very easy."

Ella was not sick, but wished she had been by the time it was over. The stitches marched unevenly up the back of his shoulder, and her fingers were stained a rusty red. The sorcerer seemed unconcerned as he replaced the bandages, studying her closely. "What is your name?" he asked her finally, almost reluctantly.

"Didn't they tell you when they gave you your 'gift'?"

"Your given name."

She paused, reluctant to give away the information. She had held it a secret since she arrived, her talisman against the desert and sadness and fear. She looked down at her reddened fingertips.

"Eleanor," she said wearily, quietly. "They used to call me Ella. What is your name?

He started to rattle off the many titles and nicknames of the Persian court. "No," she insisted. "Your given name."

"Once it was Erik."

**Author's note: Thanks for reading, and for the kind words. : )**


	6. Unheard Prayers

_Ella._

He did not know what to think of her. She had done the sutures under protest, but she did a thorough job. Her fingertips were soft and surprisingly gentle given it was her first time. Her face had been a wicked shade of green.

He had not expected her to ask for his name – it had been several years since he had used it. In Russia he liked the anonymity; here, everything was an illusion – the various titles he took on fed and supported the façade.

He had not expected all her careful, cautious questions – about the palace, his travels, and how he ended up covered in blood in the middle of Persia on a random Thursday evening.

He had not expected to want to know how she had come to be this strange ghost of a girl in the shah's palace, pining away for a home she had lost as a child. He had not expected to want to know her name, her thoughts on Persia, or the purpose behind the hidden prayers she offered up each night in whispers.

And he prided himself on expecting, anticipating, everything.

He discovered her habit by accident, as the summer heat began to roll into the city. The apartment would swelter if the doors were left closed, needing a cross-breeze to cool off the rooms at night as well as during the day. During these hot nights they both began to leave the doors cracked open, an unspoken agreement upheld with averted eyes and a mutual silence. One night he had stayed up much later than usual, and had needed the great room table to spread out an especially large set of blueprints. He was leaning over the southern wing when the glow of the candle caught his eye. The light from her candle had poured over the white of her nightgown like warm silver, and turned her skin and hair to gold. Her head was bent forward, exposing the soft pale column of her neck beneath her braided hair. Her lips were pink the warm light, and silently whispering the prayer she had prayed when she was presented. Something about her hidden ritual brought to mind the faceless, serene glow of prayer candles flickering in the dark, sending their silent requests skyward in curls of heat and smoke. Precious, pointless, and achingly sad.

He watched her as often as he could, beneath the cover of his papers or silent in the dark, feeling like a voyeur in observing this highly personal ritual and yet fascinated by her persistence. She prayed like a European, like a child, her thin skirts bundled into a pad beneath her knees and her hands clasped upon the edge of her bed. She shut her eyes, the fair lashes feathering out like pale fans upon her cheeks, and offered up whispered words into the night. What conversations she had with her God he could not imagine.

He went to her door one night when he could not stand the question anymore, and stood silently against the frame. "Ella."

She jumped slightly, jerked out of her thoughts, but gave him a half of a smile. "Hello, Erik. I didn't realize you were still awake."

"What are you asking for?"

"Grace."

"That is a high order for a mattress."

"It is not an order, and I am not asking the mattress," she answered lightly, averting the challenge.

"But why? Why still do it after all these years?" he demanded.

"My mother taught me my prayers when I was a little girl – when I pray I remember her. And I like to believe there is someone out there who sees me, who hears me. I like to think that one day I will see my family again, that this isn't all there is," she said softly. "Why do you dislike it so much?"

"Because God is a lie, and it's one that people use to hide behind."

She frowned – he could tell that she disagreed, but she did not press the point. "Weren't you raised in a faith by your parents?

Flashes of those early catechisms flashed through his mind, all those useless, earnest prayers repeated night after night by a child too young to realize that some things were impossible. "My father died before I was born; my mother did not have much heart for it after that. I don't think she was particularly devout before – she was very young." He hestitated, then continued quietly, "But he was known as a good man."

_Why, why would you tell her that? _

"I'm sorry," she said simply. He waited for Ella to ask more, poised with a scathing reply to deflect the question and end the conversation. It had taken years for those wounds to close – he would not re-open them on a whim to satisfy a girl with a candle. Instead she asked, "Are you ever lonely here?"

"Why would you ask that?"

"I am – constantly. I just wondered if you were, too, even though you did not like Europe much. The other night you said that Persia was different now than it was in the beginning."

Erik thought of the healing gash that prickled across his shoulder and back. The wound had been far too accurate and far too deep for comfort. He had seen the knife coming, and yet had not been able to move. He just stared at it dispassionately for seconds too long, before his instincts had kicked in and sent him hurtling to one side of his attacker while burying the knife into his neck. The blood had sprayed everywhere – it was messy, and out of character. And in the end, there he was – not an untouched Angel of Death, but a bleeding carcass in a ring surrounded by the spoiled court of the Sultana. Their faces had been twisted with glee, and he realized that the excitement was that each time, there was the chance that he would die, as well. Days later, stitches well concealed, he had unveiled his latest torture and watched dispassionately as its victims begged and screamed within its confines. Another toy for the Sultana, another disaster from his hands.

"Persia is different because the Sultana is a lunatic," he replied cuttingly. "It was not supposed to be like this. I came here thinking that I could get away from this, do something else. I couldn't find any real work in Europe – I am too young, no one knows me, and no one wants an architect without a face. I wanted a project that would prove that I could create something wonderful, something the whole world would have to notice. I had a good teacher, once, who taught me everything he knew. I wanted to take that and prove that it wasn't wasted. I wanted to prove everyone wrong, to make a name for myself so I would never have to run from here to there begging for work again." He stopped himself abruptly_. _"But everything I touch seems to twist around on itself, and now I make the most horrible tortures in the world. You have seen them, haven't you? They are becoming quite famous."

She didn't know what to say to that, and they sat in silence for a few minutes. "How old are you?" she finally asked.

"Thirty-three."

"Liar," she proclaimed unexpectedly, and he smiled despite himself.

"Fine. Twenty-two. But say thirty-three if anyone asks."

"Twenty-two is still young – there will be other palaces after this one," she said gently.

Erik was surprised she did not try to convince him to leave, or to refuse the Sultana's demands. _Of course, she is interested in leaving here alive, despite the Sultana. _

"I forget sometimes that you have learned this place the way you have," he observed.

She shrugged. "I have been here a long time- and the Sultana rules the harem completely."

Erik wondered what she had seen, but could not bring himself to ask. The apartment was hot – oppressive and stuffy under the lingering heat of the day, and he suddenly wanted to think about something else, something outside of the palace, the Sultana, and the ruined plans wrapped up in the court.

"Did you like the new books?"

"I did – I finished _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ first. Have you read it?"

"No, I haven't."

"It is very pretty – it is about a wedding and an enchanted forest."

"Tell me the plot."

He watched her as she described the lovers' misadventures, the fairies' trickery, and the faltering play launched for the duke and duchess, her voice drawing out the story word by word on the blank canvas of the night. She smiled as she described the exciting parts of the story and its happy ending, her eyes soft and bright in the candlelight as she drew them both into a world outside of Persia.


	7. A Castle on the Sand

Ella woke in a panic early one morning, jarred out of sleep by light and a loud whisper.

"Ella, wake up." Erik asked, fully clothed and standing next to her bed. His amber eyes flickered in the candlelight, and she pulled the light coverlet around her quickly.

"What are you doing here?" she asked worriedly, searching for some clue of the present danger.

He crouched down beside the bed, his eyes strangely light and his voice rushed. "Would you like to leave the palace for the day?"

Ella was confused.

"What are you talking about? Has the Sultana come for me?"

He sighed in frustration, one hand raking back his black hair. It stood raggedly on end, adding to the odd early morning scene. He repeated slowly, "Would you like to leave the palace for the day? If you would like to come, I will take you with me to see the new palace, and the bluffs beyond. But we have to leave now – I don't want the Sultana to know." He frowned, evidently unimpressed by her silent, gaping stare. ""Do you want to come or not?"

_A few hours out of this cage? _"Yes," she replied hurriedly, "I'm coming."

He nodded, satisfied. "Wear something you can walk in."

They crept out of the palace along back halls and staircases Ella had never known existed, much less seen. At one point they slipped through the Sultana's court itself, feet away from her gilded thrown and silk cushions yet concealed behind an elaborately carved false wall. Ella followed him silently out of the palace and down to the stables, feeling uneasy and giddy with the strange journey. She hid in the shadows near the stable yard while Erik slipped the stable boy a good sum of money, and returned with a large black horse hitched to a small cart.

"Are you sure he is safe?" she whispered nervously, eyeing the horse as it danced impatiently, pulling against the harness in irritation.

"It will be fine – he just hates cartwork, so we are not in for any favors. He's mine, and he's really almost exclusively for riding."

He was right – the horse jostled and bounced the cart at every opportunity, seeming to feel that if he was forced to pull it against his will, the least he could do was to make the ride as unpleasant to everyone else as it was to him. Erik's driving style hardly helped - he let the horse careen across the uneven road at a brisk canter.

"Here we are," he announced finally, jumping down from the cart easily. Ella climbed

down, gratefully stretching sore muscles as she walked up to the great marble steps of the palace. In the blue light of the early morning, the marble was cool and serene against the warm sands surrounding it, set off like a jewel by a frame of lush gardens and the stark outline of the mountains in the distance.

"The grand drive will be here," Erik stated, gesturing at a length of the dusty road they had stopped on. "In here," he continued, moving aside the elaborately carved wooden door, "Is the main entrance. The offices of state are will be in the wing to the left, the shah's quarters to the right, and the harem will be beyond the door you see there."

The stonework was beautiful – delicate fretwork tracing intricate patterns across columned doorways, honeycombed ceilings, and grand staircases floating upwards without any seeming support. He pointed out the support beams, describing the careful math and measurements that went into each piece to ensure that the extravagant designs would hold.

"Here is my favorite part," he said abruptly, and led her down a hallway and into an open courtyard in the center of the palace. Carving decorated the stone porches like lace, echoing the delicate vines and flowers starting to grow within the plantings. "I wanted to it echo the Alhambra palace, in Spain, which is known for its beautiful gardens."

Ella, who admittedly knew nothing of architecture, felt that it was grander than anything she had ever seen – a secret oasis, a cool and peaceful haven from the dust and heat outside its thick walls. _It's like a dream…_

After a while she realized that Erik was shifting from foot to foot, waiting, with growing impatience, for a response.

"It is amazing – it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen," she confessed truthfully.

He looked away from her quickly, and was silent for a moment. "I will show you the second floor."

He took her through the entire length of the palace, from the high towers to the pit of the cellars, in and out of the hidden passages the traced between. It was a maze – a secret puzzle, a separate life concealed inside the solid-seaming walls and pillars.

He seemed different here – lighter and comfortable in this kingdom from his imagination. The bitterness seemed to melt away from his voice, and Ella watched him as he animatedly described the different components of the building, pointed out the particularly difficult areas, the ones that had turned out better than expected, and the hidden flaws that irritated him which she never would have seen. The court, the Sultana, the bargain seemed to fade in this pretty world, and she let them slip away under flow of his voice and the rush of this small escape.

A horse rode up with a great clattering across the main drive, unexpectedly breaking the early morning silence and shocking her back to reality. Erik tensed immediately, on guard again as he walked to a window to glance out at the intruder. One hand was on the knife at his belt; he peered out from behind the window from the shadows, careful to keep out of sight.

"_Merde_," he hissed quietly, "I swear he stalks me."

"Who?"

"The Daroga," he groaned, "as boring a man as possible. Come – the sooner I find out why he is here, the sooner I can tell him to leave."

"Daroga, what a horrible surprise," Erik announced without preamble as the man entered the front door. Erik walked down the steps reluctantly, an angry pause on each one to emphasize his words.

The Daroga was middle aged, his bearing military-straight. On a closer view, Ella thought he looked unexpectedly careworn – not the imposing figure of law she would have expected from his title. When he saw her, he smiled.

"Ah, so this is the girl. It is good to see you, madame. The rumor in the court is that you are a ghost, as seldom as you venture out."

Ella was doubtful the rumor was as benign as this – _I have not left the rooms once in months._

"You are looking well - a flower in the desert," he continued. A quaint, polite compliment for a bride. His eyes were tired, but kind. Ella bowed her head in a silent dip to thank him. He turned to Erik, "May I speak with you in private?"

It was not a request.

With a glance at her, Erik shrugged and moved off a small distance. The Daroga went further, stepping around a corner before talking in hushed tones. Ella stayed very quiet, her ears straining to pick up the conversation in the echoing hall.

"…safer? There is not a place… requests your presence…" was all she could make out of the Daroga's muted voice before Erik's irritated curse echoed through the hall.

"_C'est des connerie_!" He stalked through the door without a backwards glance at the Daroga. "We are leaving," he announced.

"What did the Daroga say?" she asked fearfully. "Why does the Sultana want to see you?"

"She is bored, of course," he bit off.

He was silent on the trip back, curtly ordering the Daroga to return ahead of them. As they neared the palace gates, he spoke reluctantly, "The Daroga is a good man, Ella. If anything ever…happens, try to find him. He will help you if he can."


	8. Sea of Eyes

It had started with the old nightmare.

"_Remove the mask," the judge demanded grimly. Erik tried to run, but was rooted to the ground; he tried to protest but the words seemed to choke and die in the huge courtroom. _

"_Remove the mask", the nameless, faceless judge demanded again, and as if by one mind a mob of townspeople sprang up to populate the court benches, to press against the front railings and to join in the demand. "Remove the mask!"_

_Erik felt his hands rise to his face of their own accord, obeying that seething mass of humanity as his mind railed against them. Suddenly the mask seemed too warm – white hot, it clamped onto his skin and began to sear through skin, smoking and eating through flesh and bone with its consuming fire. His hands tore at the flaming fabric and came away burning; he began to scream but the cries only echoed in his mind – the very air of the courthouse silenced them like a vacuum. The onlookers peered in, their faces animated with jeers and laughter. His mother's pert, fox-like face appeared as she wove through the onlookers – he reached out his hands to her in wordless desperation. Her dark eyes were hard as she cast a final, contemptuous glance at him before gracefully turning her back and walking away. She disappeared seamlessly into the crowd, and Erik felt the fire eat through his eyes. _

He opened his eyes and all was dark. With a curse, he ripped the heavy mask from his face. It lay humid and wrinkled in his hand like a dark blotch as he took long breaths and worked to steady the tremors that coursed through the lines of his body. He lit a candle, and checked his pocket watch.

3AM, and he was done with sleep for the night. He muffled a groan.

_It will be a long wait until dawn. _

The apartment had been hot and stuffy, even with the open windows, and he had wanted to leave. The palace was progressing. _Not fast enough to suit me or tempt Ella_, he thought wryly, _but it is coming together. _She asked about it often, why he had started it, why he continued despite the Sultana, the details and the plans. He had planned to leave early in the morning to inspect the work before the heat of the day. The idea came to him unexpectedly, a sudden impulse just as he was leaving.

_It would be no trouble to take her along. _

Then the Sultana had found him, miles away at an hour when she and her ladies should have been asleep on their silken pillows like overblown housecats.

The Daroga delivered the request politely, but there was no pretending it was not an order.

"What the fuck does she want?" Erik had demanded, knowing full well what the Daroga's answer would be.

"What does she ever want? She is bored. She was not pleased to find you gone."

"Since when do I have to report my every move?"

"Since the palace is very nearly done," the Daroga paused, uncomfortable, before continuing in a hushed and reluctant voice. "You would do well to watch yourself – I don't know what her plans are, but I do know the shah does not have the same eye for detail that you do. He will not think a thing of finishing up the rest however and whenever he sees fit." He paused for a moment. "The girl pleases you, yes?"

"What business is that of yours?"

"Watch out her, too. She will not be able to protect herself against the Sultana."

"What do you mean?" Erik asked stubbornly, ignoring the dark whisper that reminded him exactly what the Daroga meant.

"It would be a shame to see her die for sport," he replied bluntly.

The rising sun was rapidly heating the road when they returned – he felt the searing rays begin to warm the dark fabric of his coat and mask against his hot skin. They rode in near silence back through the waking city. He left Ella at the door of the apartment, and did not look back at her as he walked towards the Sultana's chambers. The heat was sweltering now, oppressive and unforgiving in the long, still halls.

The slaves and courtiers parted before him as Erik entered the royal court, their eyes prickling on his skin with that dangerous mixture of fear and disgust he had come to know so well through his travels. He ignored them, focusing on _her_.

"Sorcerer," she addressed him in the sing-song voice peculiar to her, "You have not been to see me. I am _quite_," her voice hardened, and she bit off her words for dramatic effect, "_bored". _

_"_The palace progresses, Madame, and has required my attention." Eric noted two of the Shah's mid-level advisors flanking the Sultana's right hand, and immediately knew who to thank for his present summons and the Sultana's sudden ennui. "But boredom? With these worthy gentleman as company, I should think that you would be laughing constantly."

A hushed snigger snaked through the court, and the two men glowered at him. Erik offered the thinnest of smiles, eyes narrowed.

A small smile flickered across the Sultana's mouth. "Yes, it is hard to put up with the fools who surround me. Find something to entertain us, magician. Perhaps a song? It is always amazing that such a hideous creature as yourself should have stolen an angel's voice."

Erik felt wooden suddenly – like a puppet going through the motions as strings were pulled. He nodded stiffly. A moment later the court gasped as sound echoed from the ledger one of the advisors held in his hand, then began to laugh as the book made its way through a raucous song mocking the thieving administration of the noble who held it.

"His lordship's ledgers seem to have tales enough, Madame, to entertain you for months," Erik observed dryly when the final notes faded.

"Indeed," the Sultana smiled suddenly. She flicked her hand in dismissal. "Oh, I almost forgot…"

Erik paused for a moment, before turning slowly. _The Sultana 'accidently' forgot nothing. _

"How is your lovely wife? Dutiful, I hope?"

"As dutiful as your majesty would wish," he replied evenly. He heard a muffled laugh turn to a cough in the back of the room. The Sultana's eyes glittered like a cat's

.

"Of course, she has no…_objections_, then? All of our girls are brought up to their duty, but some are silly young things, who require a firm hand."

Erik stayed stubbornly silent, and the Sultana moved on.

"There are, after all, so many ways for a woman to please a man – I hope you have enjoyed her company. She is pretty in her foreign way, is she not?"

A few more smothered laughs erupted in the back of the room, and Erik felt his face begin to flood a deep red beneath his mask. The Sultana smiled. "Very well. You are dismissed, magician. Find something to amuse me. I expect your designs by morning tomorrow."

The crowd parted again to let him pass, clearing a wide path to the door. Erik did not look at the sea of eyes that followed him as he walked out of the hall with firm, even steps. His heart seemed too tight – it pounded dully in his ears and seemed to fill up his chest and squeeze out the air. He did not stop until he reached the new palace. He found a small room, and pulled his morphine case from his pocket. In a moment the tourniquet was tied, in another a vein swelled up towards the waiting needle. The drug hit within moments, the spreading warmth flowing through his body. His heart rate slowed, and he could breathe again.

"Erik, what is wrong?" Ella asked immediately after he entered the apartment that evening, the new plans for the Sultana tucked beneath his arm with his coat. Her voiced sounded loud, and her eyes – always the eyes! – followed him as he collapsed on one of the couches. They itched annoyingly – _It's as if they are crawling across my skin – _and he had a sudden desire to tear the skin from his arms, shred it, shed it like a fake shell. He pushed back his sleeves, popping off the small shell buttons.

"What is wrong? God, Ella, you are stupid. And all your talk about England is stupid. If you had a brain in your head you would have made a play for one of the Persian lords, and you could be a fat and happy wife with a million stupid babies by now, instead of -"

"No," she interrupted fiercely, "It is _not_ stupid. It is the core of my heart."

_Ella, Ella – what will become of you?_

"What has happened?" she pressed.

"What do you care, Ella – don't you get that this is all pretend? It's all made up, like the books you are reading," he was rambling now, but could not stop. _If she would just stop talking _– a few moments behind his own locked door, and he could find another vial of morphine and make this all disappear. _Her eyes burned now…_

"What is pretend? Erik - stop it! You are going to make your arms bleed if you don't stop!" Both her hands trapped his on the table, and he realized his forearms were covered with rising welts from the bite of his nails. Her hands were cool and pressed hard against his, her palms covering the irritated skin across the top of his wrists like a balm. He wanted to weep suddenly, to curse, to bury his face in the backs of her hands until their coolness seeped through the velvet mask and stilled the fire behind his eyes.

Her eyes were wide with alarm, and something else, something sad. "You are taking too much opium," she said firmly. Her hands had gentled, and lay lightly across his. Her skin was pink next to the pale yellow tone in his; her hands and forearms were delicate and smooth. In a moment, he knew she would retrieve them without a thought.

_Pity, _he realized. _It was pity. _

He had wanted to make a simple deal – one night spent in the smooth warmth of her body, and he would escort her to England and leave her there. It had all seemed so matter of fact then. This was a service harem girls provided; given that she could hardly be expected to welcome him, the promised trip would buy a level of willingness – just enough smoke and mirrors to make it through one night, and one night only.

He had not thought about what it would mean to see her every day, to see that her eyes could be warm and alive instead of distant and flat, searching instead of shuttered. He hadn't expected her to be kind, he hadn't anticipated the boredom or the loneliness that made her seek out whatever comfort she could from conversations about books and faraway places with the court's personal demon. He hadn't expected to like her.

He had imagined the warm scent of her hair as he tugged the shift quickly over her head, the rosy glow of her pale skin as he demanded she fulfill her agreement and ran his hands over her curving body. He imagined taking her, hot and heady and quickly in the night, drawing up the years, the nights of frustrated want and releasing them into her warmth. She had agreed to their bargain - she would not stop him. He could have her, soft and unresisting. His first and last knowledge of a woman.

Then he would see her face, the quick, familiar light of her eyes. And imagine them turning dark for him, mirroring the need he felt; he imagined feeling the pulse flutter beneath the skin of her neck in anticipation; he imagined her gentle hands on his face, trailing up his arms; her stubborn, insistent and wonderful voice low with passion instead of hurt and resignation. Alone at night, he imagined her staying.

It was foolishness. She wished to go home, and he was the only person to present her with the means. The questions, their idle talk, the way she had of speaking to him as though he were a man instead of a monster - if he were anyone else, she would do the same. Once her debt was paid she would go home to England without a backwards glance, and in time would curse him for this time together.

Now, more then ever, he desired and lusted after something he could never have.

The Sultana's court was not capable of subtlety, which meant that his predicament was painfully obvious to anyone with a knowledge of such matters. The entire harem, the entire court, were snickering up their sleeves at him.


	9. Lies and Truth

It had been a mistake to touch him.

Ella could feel it the moment it happened, but was unable to turn back. His skin was warm and raw with rising welts, and the building heat spread up through her arms until she could feel the clawing panic in her own mind, battering against her skull in frustrated despair.

It drew her in against her will, against her reason – an accidental player in a story she had never meant to be a part of. He did not seem like a demon when they had talked about plays and masonry. And she could not think of him as the evil sorcerer, the Sultana's angel of death, with his anguished eyes and ravaged forearms.

The sultana called for him constantly in the weeks that followed, and there were no trips to the palace or talks of books and travel. He seemed to disappear like a ghost – appearing pale and silent at odd hours before disappearing back into his room. Each day she bore witness to the battered skin under the cuffs of his shirt and the great golden pools of his eyes, irises huge around pinned pupils that looked out at nothing. The harem had had its share of addicts. She recognized the signs with ease.

Erik was gone now for most of the day, leaving her alone in the apartment from early in the morning to late in the evening. She was absently flipping through _Hamlet_ one morning when they came.

A harsh pounding shook the door, and a man's voice demanded her presence before the Sultana her using her Persian name. Like before, she followed the eunuchs down the marble halls, her eyes tracing the intricate inlay patterns of the marble while her heart twisted in her chest and sent up silent prayers. All too soon they stood before the Sultana's jeweled doors. The doors parted, and her escorts pushed her through the doorway into the Sultana's chambers.

Ella saw heads swivel as the ladies of the court turned to look at her, gaping openly. Eyes trained on the floor, she sank to her knees and touched her forehead to the ground. The Sultana's voice rang out above her.

"It appears our little foundling has friends in her government. A man has come for you, little one." Her voice was high and lilting with laughter. "A fine English man, looking for a girl lost at sea. He offers to purchase your release from the … _dishonor_ … of your position. And at a princely sum. The choice is yours, little one; should you like to leave the benevolence of our court?"

_Lies. Even if there were a representative, even if someone had finally come to claim me - why would they release me? Why now? There is only one reason…_

"Rise, girl, I tire of waiting. What is your answer?"

_It is a trap. _

Ella forced her voice to steady, rising as bidden. "I wish only to fulfill the wishes of my generous mistress."

"You do not choose to leave my magician, then?" The Sultana's voice was as slippery as silk. Out of the corner of her eyes Ella saw the faces of the women in the hall began to register shock and disgust. The Sultana whispered her words dangerously. "Answer me, girl."

Ella looked up through her lashes. The Sultana's eyes glittered eagerly, like a child receiving a toy, and Ella thought quickly_. To agree is to be back in the harem by night, at best. And to ask to leave is death…_

"He would come for me," she whispered bleakly, raising her eyes to the Sultana's and letting her voice and eyes go as flat as those of a dying captive. The temper had come so easily with Erik had never once flared during the hopeless years she had lived in the harem. Surely they would believe her fear without question. Her next words were a ragged whisper. "One day he would leave Persia, and find and punish me for my disobedience."

"You bear no scars," the Sultana said scornfully, but her eyes were bright with interest as she raked her gaze over Ella's smooth arms and face.

Ella let the nervousness reined within her mind have run of her body, starting in a deep, trembling shudder that made her voice shake. She choked out a single word in answer: "No."

The implications of this echoed throughout the stilled hush of the chamber like the crack of a whip.

"Then you wish to return to your master and…husband?" the Sultana purred happily. She was playing now, and Ella obliged, looking up desperately with mute, agonized eyes. The Sultana made a gesture of dismissal, her mouth curled into a smirk of amusement. "Go, then, as you wish."

Ella had just enough time to register the looks of horror and pity on the faces of the other women before forcing herself to her feet, placing them one in front of the other until she was once again safely behind the doors of Erik's apartment and the eunuchs' footsteps echoed down the hall and disappeared. She collapsed against the doors, crumpling like a blanket dropped to the ground – and waited.

He arrived as the afternoon sun began to slant into the room, moving slowly, heavily, his shoulders held stiffly straight as though only sheer force of will kept them from disintegrating completely.

"You are a fine actress," was all he said.

"She believed? She will not come for me?" Ella demanded, panic in her throat.

He laughed suddenly, a harsh barking sound that splintered the quiet of the room.

"Yes, _you_ are quite well."

"What – what do you mean?"

He sat down at the table, and was silent for several minutes.

"Ella..." he began, frustration in his tired voice, "how do you torture someone without leaving scars?"

A dart of fear coursed through her, then dawning horror. "I didn't mean – please believe me, I did not know that she would ask that of you!"

He sat down quietly, picking up a glass cup and turning it about in his hands. "I know."

Ella woozily fought back the images of the courts executions, the image of blood pooling on the floor of the Sultana's ring before then running and creeping up her fingertips. "What will you do?"

"I will think of something," he answered evenly. He continued to turn the cup, lost in thought, and Ella watched miserably as it caught the sun and sent a long, pale beam of light flashing across the table.

He paced the apartment like a tiger for nights afterwards, restless and irritable – and on the fifth night they had gotten into a heated fight before he had disappeared into his room, slamming the door behind him. She waited nearly a half an hour for her own blood to cool, then came to him as the morphine was blossoming in his veins.

"Erik," she knocked softly at the locked door. "Erik, please come out."

"Go away."

"What did the Sultana want today?"

"Rainbows and kittens, of course."

"What of the palace?" she asked. A long sigh and the creak of the bed, then footsteps approached the door. A flick of the lock, and Erik opened it wearily. His shirt was wrinkled and creased, sleeves rolled up, and she could see the fresh puncture wounds and angry purpled bruises on his forearms. His eyes were tired, and a wave of guilt tore through her. He would not tell her what he created to satisfy the Sultana, and she had not had the courage to press for an answer.

"Stop yelling through the door like a washer woman," he chastised her morosely before walking back to the plain, rumpled bed and sinking back down onto the white sheets. Ella noticed that the bedside table was littered with needles and bottles. " I don't think the palace would be improved by kittens – unless, of course, we could find a way to have them literally lick someone to death."

"Erik, be serious."

"I am very serious. You know, I should take part of the banquet hall and make it into a music room for performances – the Sultana cares nothing for music… it would be a fine joke…"

"You are killing yourself," she protested, breaking off the meandering tirade that was sure to follow. His eyes were listless, flitting from one spot to another.

"I told you earlier I would not cheat to you out of your trip."

"There will be no trip if you are dead or drugged out of your mind, no matter what you say." He did not respond, and Ella pressed on, "Do you think you are the only person to ever discover opium? How do you think the Sultana gained so much power? Her father was a strong man, but the pipe destroyed him completely. They say she killed him in the end, but no one knows, as wasted away he was and sunk into dreams. You might as well take a knife to your own throat - one day the Sultana will call you when you are like this, and some street thug will do just that. You are merely making her sport more interesting - playing roulette with a needle. It's madness."

"Indeed, pretty Ella," he nodded in mock seriousness. He sat up in bed, leaning back on his hands. "You are all cares and worries tonight."

"I have been worried for several weeks now – you have not been listening," she insisted as she sat down on the side of the bed. The black of his hair, mask and pants contrasted starkly with the white of his shirt and bedclothes and skin. She noticed that his eyes had – finally!- stopped careening around the room. "Please give up the opium," she pleaded, " there is no reason to throw everything away like this."

He was watching her now, amber eyes suddenly wet and glowing in the semi-darkness.

_Perhaps he has finally heard me…_

Suddenly his hands were hard on hers, pressing them down into the bedclothes as he lunged forward, the velvet of the mask pressed against her face, his thin lips on hers. His mouth was warm and clumsy, his hands were ice cold. A moment, then he leaned away, hands still on hers. Her lip tingled strangely as they parted; his, she noticed distractedly, had flushed beneath the edge of the mask.

She did not breathe, and they sat in silence staring at one another for a long moment.

"Please don't cry, Ella please say you won't cry," he whispered in a fast, run-on staccato, scanning her face anxiously.

_Cry?_ Her temper began to flare. _Cry?_ Did he think this was some petty novella, that she was a child to sob and swoon over a drug-addled kiss, or a fool to be frightened off? He had already said they would lie together before she could leave, and she had agreed. _He can hardly expect terror now_. "Why did you do that?" she demanded angrily, tugging her hands away.

He removed his hands from hers instantly. "I don't know."

"I want you," she said shakily, "to stop taking so much opium."

He sighed, shoulders slumping almost imperceptibly. "Ella, come morning I will make arrangements to send you home. Immediately. Sultana be damned."

"But, I –," she fumbled, flustered.

"I will not kiss you again."

Ella steeled herself grimly.

_So now is the time – you knew it was coming…_

"Very well, sir." His eyes were empty, looking beyond her out the window. She steadied herself, leaned in, and kissed him on the mouth.

He froze at her touch, then broke away as if scalded. "Don't!" he spat, springing away from her to the far corner of the bed.

She blinked in confusion. "But, you said-"

"I am sending you home – tomorrow – tonight if I could! Don't" he snarled, "touch me! I swear to God I will put you on the first boat I find going anywhere near England myself!"

"Are you leaving?"

"No."

"Then I won't go!"

He stared at her, his shoulders shaking in tense lines of frustration. "You won't go? Listen to yourself - you don't even make sense!"

"I hate boats – I cannot swim – and I do not trust anyone you could find to take me! We could go by land together if you would just leave. What could possibly be here for you? You said yourself one place was the same as any other – just pick another place! Pick any other place, and stop taking so much morphine!" Her fears sounded ridiculous now, even to her own ears, but she could not stop as she sat taking gulping, sobbing breaths. Erik looked like he would gladly shake her until her teeth chattered.

"Do you think traveling thousands of miles across Asia and Europe will be a pleasure trip? God, you are stubborn! All of Persia is not cursed, not everyone is waiting to rape you, all boats do not sink, and going across Europe with me will be no advantage, I promise you. If you weren't so foolish you would jump at this chance!"

Ella felt the words ring in her ears as she sputtered out an answer, "You - your tortures do not make you powerful – they make you small! And you have purchased your palace at too great a price – you know it as well as I do. If you didn't it wouldn't bother so and you wouldn't need the morphine. Your work was not worth your soul, and if you weren't so foolish you would pick up what is left of both and leave!" Her heart pounded angrily in her chest as they glared at each other across the rumpled bed.

They sat in silence for several minutes, until Ella felt that neither of them quite dared to talk. _The truth burns both ways_, she thought grimly as she replayed his words in her mind. She felt as exposed as she had the first day she had come to him, dressed up in a mockery of bridal silks.

Erik was the one to finally break the silence, and his voice was gentle and sad. "It seems neither of us are quite as clever as we thought we were. You would have done better to leave now, Ella, but if you insist on staying I'm sure we will leave together soon enough - one way or another. "

"What do you mean?" she asked, frustrated.

He sighed and changed the topic instead. "I will cut back on the opium."


	10. Out of Persia

_One way or another._

Erik looked at her, the color still high on her cheeks from anger, her lips pursed in unhappy confusion.

She was frightened, and he had no better promise to offer than the one he gave.

Later in the night, when she had retreated to her own room, he lay alone in the dark. The fading drug began its fast, familiar crawl across his skin in a million tiny pricks of glass, as his stomach began to knot and turn. Erik remembered once as a child, when he had picked up one of the beautiful, glowing embers out of the fire. The numb shock followed by the searing pain and subsequent beating were still a clear memory nearly twenty years later.

_Why, _Ella had asked, with hot, startled eyes.

_I don't know_.

Her lips had burned like her eyes, going soft with shock before turning to marble.

There were a million reasons he should ignore her protests and send her away alone. Yet even now, with the Sultana's guards posted everywhere to prevent any ideas of escape, he knew he would not. There had to be a way to smuggle them both out of the country…

He thought of this as the absence of the drug sent the dark shadows of the room spinning in painful fragments, the very walls seeming to close in until the room seemed little larger than a coffin and he feared he would suffocate. The room was too hot – he was drenched in sweat – and when the vomiting started in the early hours of the morning and he gave into the steady pull. The morphine flooded his veins beautifully, serenely, as his mind slowed and calmed.

_There will be other palaces, _Ella had once said_. _Erik frowned, thinking of a letter he had received earlier, intriguing but no doubt screened by the Sultana's officers. _It would mean hiding in plain sight, but the appointment may serve our purpose..._

_All I need is a little time to make the arrangements, and a way out of Persia. _

He timed his visit carefully – the Daroga would be sure to pounce on any pronounced signs of the morphine with a painfully boring lecture. Even with this precise timing, the Daroga did not spare his choice of words.

"I see you are in your right mind – for once," the Daroga observed sharply as Erik entered his offices. Papers were stacked up on his desk, and he frowned over the mess. "I am very busy here – I have no time to send out for your poison. You will have to find some other errand boy to fill your pipe."

"I have not come to discuss that. I am leaving Persia."

The Daroga's eyebrows shot up to his graying hairline. "Do you not know? The guards are instructed to watch you. You have angered far too many people with your insolence."

"Which is why we are leaving within a fortnight."

"We?"

"I am taking the girl with me."

The Daroga looked at him in surprise.

"She will slow you down considerably, and you risk her life." He hesitated a split second too long, eyes flitting momentarily away, then continued, "Leave her here. If you depart from the new palace you will have an advantage in time and distance – I will look after the girl until it is safe to send her away."

_He does not think she wishes to come – he thinks to save her. _The thought prickled uncomfortably, but he pushed it away.

"I have promised I will take her. She asked me to take her to England. Myself," he added, the words hanging a little too much like a protest in the air.

"It will be more dangerous trying to leave the country."

"But will you help?" Erik demanded bluntly. He watched as the Daroga walked over to a window, gazing at the courtyard and guards below. The Daroga had been a strange ally these years – a pious man in a court where moral was always relative, and a surprisingly humane spot in a bloodthirsty administration. Erik had never completely understood why he had taken it upon himself to serve as a reluctant guide through the court – or when the demands of this self-appointed task would finally prove too much. Finally the Daroga sighed and turned. "What do you want from me?"

"I need you to meet me at the bluffs beyond the new palace – I will tell you the time and place. Be sure you aren't followed, and bring two horses."

…

_One way or another._

The words lingered in Ella's mind. For the first time she cursed the years spent mourning her home at an aloof distance from the harem's bustle. Distance would not save them in this case – she needed information from close to the court, and had precious few resources to draw from.

She carried out her reconnaissance in secret. When Erik left the rooms the next day, she took the opportunity to ask one of the kitchen servants she had known from the harem for help arranging an audience with a friend, set up discreetly with the help of a rather large bribe and the pale-faced explanation that no one – not even her own master – could know. The girl's face, first doubtful, had lit up at the sight of the silver wedding silks and the meeting was arranged.

Ella slunk through the quiet corridors, fumbling to find the latch to the hidden passage behind the Sultana's court and becoming hopelessly lost a web of tunnels before finally recognizing the southern wing and her final destination.

Aara was beautiful, with a soft voice and a talent for dance and graceful decorum that had won her the notice of a prince of the court and the honor of a marriage – as a third but favorite wife. The Sultana had hated to see her leave, jealous of her beauty and the easy target it provided for her spite, but Aara's husband had been a long-time favorite with the Shah. Aara hated the Sultana. When she had left the harem she had giddily promised Ella and others to find them all husbands.

Ella had not seen her since, but it was a risk she was willing to take. Aara had been kind to her in the harem, whereas many had not. She might help.

It was a good wager – Aara received her quickly and discreetly, thrilled by the clandestine meeting and a chance to thwart the Sultana in this secret, small way.

"Oh, the court speaks constantly of the sorcerer – poor Ella, how dreadful to be given to the monster! Thank Allah you are alive – I had given you up for dead," Ella waited patiently as Aara paused uneasily, before continuing in a pained whisper. "Are you well? Is he terribly cruel? I heard the most awful rumor that said you were abused horribly, with scars everywhere… and that the Sultana…" here her mouth screwed up bitterly, as if the very name left a bad taste on her tongue, "I have heard far too many tales of her 'amusements'. Perhaps we could hide you among the laundresses…"

"I am well enough," Ella answered hastily, before Aara could form a plan. "Aara, have you heard the Sultana's plans? What of the sorcerer? I am not at the court – what is happening?"

"Well, you must know that the palace is nearly finished – the Shah is planning a great feast before the end of the year, and everyone is invited. There will be food, and entertainment – and my husband says the Sultana has some special entertainment planned, though Allah knows what that is. It is a great secret – they will not announce it until the last moment possible. I am not supposed to know, but I overheard my husband discussing it with his guard. No one knows, not even the Daroga. But don't worry!" Aara continued hastily, as Ella felt the blood drain from her face, "She will not let the sorcerer leave. My husband has said it is just a matter of time before he ends up in one of his own traps – and there is no escaping the palace guard. Oh, Ella – don't look so pale – you are almost free! Surely they would not take you."

Ella managed a tentative, weakly hopeful smile, and chose her next words carefully. "But are you sure…are there many guards?"

Aara paused now, uneasily. "There are, Ella – they are alerted throughout the halls and in the stables and courtyard." Biting her lip, she impulsively took off one of the heavy rings on her hand, and pressed it into Ella's palm. "A bribe," Aara explained simply as Ella felt her fold her own cold fingers over the heavy item and give her hand a small squeeze. "Just in case."

Ella re-entered Erik's apartment soberly, looking at its walls and doors for the first time in months. It had come to seem cheerful – a protective, hidden place in the midst of the danger around them. Ella wondered how long now it had served as a prison cell.

She heard retching from Erik's room, followed by wheezing and choking coughs – a painfully familiar sound over the past few days and nights. She had ignored it quietly, leaving him alone with his miseries. Now she poured a glass of water and wet a small stack of towels in a bowl, then entered the room with a short knock.

Erik was poured over the bed, a messy tangle of pale limbs and sweat-soaked hair and clothing. His mask lay crumpled and discarded next to the washbowl; his bare face was buried in the sheets. She set the water on the table next to the bed, then sat down beside his head.

"There is water on the table when you care for it."

"Get. The hell. Out." the growling rasp emerged, muffled in the bedclothes from the perfectly still form.

She pressed the back of her finger tips against the corner of his sleeve, a painfully fearful reassurance. The sun had begun to set, its slanting rays sifting through the latticed windows and drawing bars of shadow and light across the walls of the disheveled bedroom.

"It will pass – it must," she said in a tone stretched to confidence. "When it does, I must speak to you about the guards."

"They are posted through the hall – yes, I know. The Sultana is bored"

"I fear it is more than that. I – I spoke to an old acquaintance from the harem."

He sat up suddenly, fluidly, turning and hiding his face with one hand as the other brought the black mask up to its normal place. His eyes were bloodshot and sharp, and the beautiful voice was hoarse and threatening.

"_What have you done?"_

"I went to see a friend, who was kind to me, and asked about the Sultana's plans. She said-"

"Ella, you may have killed us! You have no idea who she has spoken to, or what she said. What did you say, exactly?"

"I asked about the Sultana's plans, and her plans for you, and the court."

"Dear God, you may as well have gone up to the Sultana herself and thanked her for her hospitality. What did she say?"

"The halls are guarded - "

"I know."

"As well as the courtyards and stables. And the Shah is planning a celebration for the new palace at the end of the year."

Erik said nothing to this, but looked around the cluttered room for a moment. "Ella, do you remember the passage I showed you? How the latch catches from the top?"

Ella thought of the hours wasted wandering among those dark tunnels before finding her way. "Yes – some."

"I will show you the entire course later tonight until you know it by heart. Remember it, and be ready to run – thick clothes and your best shoes. There is nothing to do now but wait."

Ella wondered what the tipping point would be. _What entertainment could the Sultana be planning?_

…

A week later, the eunuchs came again, hard faces impassive and cold as they demanded her presence in the Sultana's chambers.

Ella wanted to scream when they opened the heavy doors to the Sultana's court and she saw a slow, spreading smile light the Sultana's face. Again she lowered her head to the floor, and again Sultana's voice floated above her in a silken whisper.

"Have you heard my sorcerer sing, little one?"

"No, your highness."

"A pity that you did not. You will return to the harem– your master will have little need of your beauty now." Ella felt her hear lurch painfully in her chest, a strange, sick feeling that stole her breath. The Sultana sighed, and Ella suddenly hated her all the more fiercely for her melodramatic pout. "We will have to find a new use for your talents. After all, you were the inspiration for one of my favorite amusements… and I was to have such fun…"

She flicked her wrist, and irritable sign of dismissal, and Ella backed quietly out of the room as her heart hammered in her chest.

"_Your master will have little need…" _She inwardly cursed him roundly – Erik, who was always so sure of everything and full of cryptic plans – waiting and dragging his feet until the Sultana finally made her move. _He cannot be dead – Dear Lord, please don't let him be dead…_

The eunuchs turned towards the harem, and Ella fell into step behind them, her mind racing.

_I have to find him._

A juncture of halls, and she recognized the stairs and remembered hidden doors behind them. She slowed her pace, dropping behind them bit by bit.

_Slower, slower until they are far enough ahead of me…_

A few more feet widened between them, and she turned to run.

_Faster now, to turn the corner before they can catch me… Please, please let me find the lock. _

She heard their voices, harsh with surprise, and the fast thud of their feet as they ran down the hall while she frantically ran her fingers across the top of the door, searching for the hidden latch.

Suddenly a man's hand brushed her out of the way, opened the latch and pulled both of them inside the hidden compartment, closing the door seconds before the eunuch's footsteps raced past.

Ella held her breath as their steps faded down another hall, then looked up at Daroga's clean profile, just visible from the diffused light peeking in from a screen high above.

He tapped on her elbow, gesturing her to follow him.

They trailed through the tunnel, past the Sultana's court and into a quiet part of the palace.

"Is he still alive?" Ella asked, the words rushing forward past any thanks or greeting. The Daroga looked tire, careworn, and somehow disappointed.

"I should think so." Ella felt relief spill across her face, but the Daroga frowned inexplicably. "They don't intend to kill him – at least, not yet."

"Then what-"

"The Shah has ordered the guards to blind him. The castle is close enough to complete, and the Shah is very, very pleased with its beauty."

"I don't understand." _If the Shah was pleased…_

"He does not want it to have a rival. Ever."

_All this time I have feared the Sultana, and it is Erik's treasured palace that is the first to turn on us._

Ella thought of Erik's books and blueprints, the passion in his voice when he described the math and the beauty of the palace and its inspirations, the fast, impatient sureness of his movements. She thought of the black mask covering black, empty sockets, over a bone white jaw and pale lips.

_Death would be kinder._

"Where is he?"

"I don't know – I have been looking for him. If the guards find him before he learns of this it is all over, but I have not seen him since yesterday. Do you know where he might be?"

Ella shook her head wordlessly, and the Daroga sighed again.

"They will be looking for you, as well, now. Stay here, and I will come back for you when I know more. Stay as quiet as you can, and in as empty a part of the palace as you can. And don't leave, if you don't know exactly how to get back in. Letting them catch you fumbling at a trapdoor will only kill us all."

With this hurried scolding, the Daroga quickly exited the tunnel. Ella barely breathed as she heard his footsteps fade in the hallway.

_Where was Erik?_

"The Daroga always did have perfect timing, but no faith in plans," a familiar voice suddenly whispered beside her in the dark stillness.

The relief was white hot, and rendered her speechless for a moment. Erik, his golden eyes sharp and focused behind the black mask, his voice matter-of-fact, his whole body tensed and alert – alive, and very much aware of the threat.

"The Daroga brought me into the passages after I ran away from the eunuchs – the Sultana ordered me back to the harem."

"Good – this would be harder if you were in the harem." Erik held a finger to his lips, and she heard footsteps echo past them in the hall. She identified them as guards by their heavy footfalls – the search was very much active. When all was quiet again he whispered almost silently. "Follow me."

Like before, they threaded through the passages but this time ended in the cellars of the palace. Finding and lighting a small lamp, Erik gestured to a small passageway cut into stone beside a drainage duct. "We will go under the palace wall – walk carefully – it is wet. Put your hand on my shoulder and one on the wall, and follow me as closely as you can." She noticed that he was dressed in Persian robes.

The ground was uneven, she discovered, and difficult to see in the lamplight, and the wall was covered with a wet, cloying mixture of mildew and mold that clung disgustingly to her fingers. She had to duck to squeeze under the low ceiling – with his tall frame, Erik was nearly bent in two as he crouched along the ledge.

"This is the only way out that is not monitored," Erik whispered by way of encouragement after she slipped several times in the wet mildew. "But see up ahead, the little spot of dark blue in the black? That will be the outside drain. Be very quiet, the parameter will be patrolled."

Outside the drain, they stumbled into a sodden puddle of foul smelling mud, then scrambled up the banks of the ditch to a small cluster of emptied stalls and shacks. The city around them seemed to seethe with sounds and movement in the early twilight.

"What now?" Ella whispered nervously, pulling her veils tightly around her face and light hair.

"We will walk to the bluffs beyond the palace. Stay behind me, and keep your face and hands as covered as possible. We can't be seen."

Three times the Sultana's guards thundered by on horseback, and three times they hid, pressed inside an alley doorway, flattened behind a merchant's wares, and once praying with foreheads pressed to the ground on stolen mats as the prayer bells began to chime over the city, the newly unconscious vendor crumpled in a heap behind his cart.

It was in the dead of night when they finally passed the new palace, shimmering under the moonlight like an oasis. Erik paused for a moment, looking at it.

"It is very beautiful," Ella whispered.

"It was," he replied quietly.

The Daroga was waiting in a small wooded area past the palace, wearing the same careworn look as before laced with urgency and unease. He registered her presence with a look of surprised relief before turning to Erik.

"Here is a horse – it's the best I could do on short notice. The guard is fanning out in all directions. Your best chance will be through the woods on the northern side, keeping clear of the roads. I will do what I can."

"I will not forget this," Erik replied lowly.

The Daroga sighed as he looked at them both, then back towards the road. "Go with Allah," he replied. With a quick movement he swung up into his saddle, and urged his horse through the dark woods towards the road.

Ella watched him disappear in the dark, hearing the sound of his voice in the distance as he redirected an approaching search party away from the woods. The escape out of Persia seemed impossibly long as she surveyed the placid chestnut mount before them.

"Erik, how are we to get across the borders?" Ella asked nervously as he handed her up onto the horse's back. Without a great deal of money to bribe their way through the roads and borders, they could never hope to escape the guards. She held little hope that the Shah and Sultana would not send men scouring the countryside.

He grinned suddenly and unexpectedly, pulling out a large bundle of linen from his pocket and handing it to her. The weight was unexpectedly heavy and cold in her hands, and the contents shifted and spilled about her splayed fingers inside the fabric. She untied it in her lap. Hundreds of gems, pearls and gold pieces glowed in the moonlight, reflecting night sky in their cold glitter. She felt her eyes widen, and beside her Erik laughed.

"We will have no trouble buying our way out of Persia."


	11. Tartary

Ella clung to Erik as they rode through the night, a hard, jarring gallop through shadows and valleys as the torches of the patrols flickered eerily in the distance. Her arms hurt, her back hurt, her ears even seemed to hurt with the constant straining, listening for sounds of the guards. Through her arms she felt the tremor of tired muscles, and knew Erik was just as worn. When the dawn broke, he began to steer the horse dangerously close to the road, scanning travelers and the horizon. The guards thundered through the woods now, and the paths had begun to fill with travelers – farmers moving stock and vegetables to the palace markets, groups of women in their flowing robes chatting with friends, a child driving chickens. When a spice caravan plodded by, he veered the horse sharply away. Ella breathed a sigh of relief as its sounds and noise faded behind them. The caravan stretched on for over a quarter mile – an endless stream of carts, camels and eyes she was happy to avoid.

When they stopped in a small wooded ditch huddled behind a farmer's field, and she slid gratefully to the ground to stretch sore muscles while scanning the landscape. A small barn sat nearby, with livestock feeding placidly in the summer sun. It was peaceful, quiet, serene. _Persia is beautiful, _Ella admitted ruefully, wincing as she straightened and stretched her arms. _And God willing, I will never see it again. _A soft thump on the ground behind her spurred her out of her thoughts, and she turned to see Erik unsaddling the horse. The discarded saddle was quickly joined by the horse's ornate bridle, broken, as Erik knotted the reins and tossed the rest on the ground.

"What are you doing?"

Looping the broken reins around the horse's neck, he spoke reassuringly to the tired, quivering animal before answering. "Do you see the little mule over there?"

Ella frowned at the dusty creature, dozing in his pasture in front of a small shack covering a cart. The image wavered slightly, and she shook her head to clear it. It had been yesterday morning since she had eaten. _I have heard him wrong. _"You cannot be serious."

"We will join the caravan – it's the best disguise. They will be looking for two fools trying to outrun the guard on one horse, not peddlers."

"Are we to buy the mule outright or steal it in the middle of the day?"

"We are not _stealing_ it," Erik stressed shortly, the fatigue creeping into his voice, "The farmer would be searching high and low for his mule, and telling anyone he could find. We are _exchanging_ it for this mare, which is worth ten times more than the mule. Trust me," he finished confidently, hiding the saddle and bridle beneath some brush, "with no sign of the mule, odds are he will keep it hidden and keep quiet until he can sell it. Wait here."

Turning his back to her, he placed the mask in his pocket and wrapped his long headscarf around his face. Ella blinked as his walk seemed to alter, ambling purposefully to the shed as if he had spent is life working in these calm pastures. Horse in tow, he could have been the farmer himself, returned from a dusty trip with a successful trade.

_But can we both disappear? Fooling a caravan full of eyes will be harder than masquerading for a field of farm animals and passerby… _

Minutes later he returned leading the quiet mule and its cart, and they were driving away from the farm and towards the dusty road. Ella scanned the crowd around them through her lashes as they fell in line towards the end of the caravan, concealed among a few straggling local carts completing business with the traders. With their faces securely covered to avoid the dust clouds thrown up by the wagons ahead, no one seemed to notice that the caravan had gained two extra members.

Late that night they collapsed under the cart, the mule tethered close by and the fires of the traders flickering lowly in the dark. Watching the fires die down, Ella felt a quiet swell of hope push back some of the fear of the past two days. "Where will we go?" she asked quietly as camp quieted around them. Erik turned to face her in the dark, his voice low.

"We will go to Russia first – I have an offer to submit plans for a summer house for one of their Princes. We will wait there while the Shah bores of his hunt and moves to other things."

"What do you know of the Russian prince?"

"He is young, recently arrived to his position. He wants a memorial to honor the occasion. We will not be hidden, but it will be riskier and more difficult to murder us there. Russia and Persia have spent plenty of time at war – the Shah will not be looking to start another. It should be safe. The prince's mother has been dead for years," he added dryly, "so that should be a pleasant change."

"And the court?"

"The court is smaller, but it is said it is beautiful. There are several ambassadors stationed there from different countries. You will be able to send letters to London, to ask after your family."

"What languages does the court speak?"

"Russian and some French."

Ella thought of her first, mute year in Persia, the Sultana's word games, and the single ally she had in Aara at the end. "I would like to learn both."

"You will have the time for it. It will be nearly winter by the time we reach St. Petersburg. _La saison d'hiver aura commencé à la cour, __malheureusement_."

"All the French I know is what I have learned from you – mainly _merde –_and somehow I am sure none of it will help me in polite conversation." Ella retorted with a laugh. "You will have to start more slowly."

He sighed dramatically, and she smiled in the dark as he whispered his reply. "Yes is _oui_ in French, да in Russian. No is _non_ in French, _нет_ in Russian. _Oui, je parle français – _Yes, I speak French. _Il est tard_ - It is late. You can go to sleep – I will keep the first watch. Try to get some rest._"_

Ella noticed the familiar movement as he tugged at his cuff, rubbing the raw skin beneath as he looked around the camp. She put her hand impulsively over the sleeve. "Thank you – for taking me out of Persia with you."

He frowned slightly, but did not move away. "We aren't out yet."

The sound of muffled shouting woke her suddenly just before dawn.

_The guards are upon us._

She scrambled out from under the cart to see Erik engaged in a fierce and whispered discussion with the driver of another caravan. The driver's face turned from eager to ashen in a second as they parted, and in the cart behind him his wife gasped and clutched her son's shoulders protectively. As Ella hurried towards them, she saw the tall shape of the mounted guardsmen in the distance.

Erik shoved her towards the covered cart and the strange little family. "Hide behind these crates, and don't make a sound. Take the boy and do not let him move away from you – he stays with you until we are over the border. _Now_!"

Climbing quickly into the cart Ella held out her hand to the child, who took it fearfully as his mother hugged him tighter, then let him go with an anguished cry. "There, there," Ella whispered with false confidence to the sniffling child, "There is no reason to be afraid." The space behind the crates was a tight fit, and the boy gaped at her discomfortingly in terror as the wagon began to move. Outside she heard the soldiers pass, questioning the drivers of the caravans. Her heart stopped as the footsteps slowed. The child trembled fearfully as the guards rattled a few of the boxes before moving on. Ella strained her ears, listening for a cry of discovery as they moved down the road. When none came, she let out the breath she had held, willing her jumping heart to skill. _He is safe...he is safe._

"See?" Ella whispered when all was quiet, her voice shaking. "All is well."

To her horror, the little boy dissolved into silent tears.

Somewhere between the boy's tears and when he finally fell asleep, the caravan drifted silently across the Tartary boarder. When the cart finally slowed to a halt Ella found herself roughly jerked out of the cart on the outskirts of a Tartary village. The mother of the child fell upon him, frantically pressing his head and hands as if in an effort to convince herself he was unharmed as she began to scream at her husband. Erik emerged silently from further down the caravan, brushing bits of straw from his robes, and motioned for her to follow him. Calmly, and without looking back, they disappeared into the small marketplace as the woman's railing cries grew behind them.

"What did you tell them?" Ella demanded suspiciously as they thread their way among the merchant stalls.

"I offered him a king's ransom to take us across the border when I saw the guards."

"And?"

"I told them the child was collateral – you would kill him if either of us were discovered."

Ella stopped, horrified, thinking of the trembling boy and her well-meaning reassurances.

"Keep walking, Ella. What would have stopped them from collecting a reward from the guard as well as pocketing the price I paid? There was no way around it. Besides, here we are in Tartary. Here is some money – buy a new shawl in a different color, a different scarf for me, and something to eat. I am going to find a horse – we can't stay here long. Come back here after you have found what you need. "

He returned an hour later, carrying the reins of a tall bay and the most non-descript little horse Ella had ever seen. The small creature trotted dutifully behind him like a dog, flicking its ears and gazing up from beneath an overgrown fetlock as if boredly amused at the silly comings and goings of the humans surrounding it. She looked like a sweet, good tempered creature that had spent her time in someone's pasture growing fat.

Ella hoped she wasn't stolen.

"She is so small – will she be able to keep up?"

"She should be. I paid a small fortune for her."

"For a small gray mare?" Ella looked skeptically at the drowsy head of the mare as it chewed complacently on a tuft of grass near the roadside.

"She is gentle enough for a child. And fast enough for an escape." Erik adjusted the stirrups, and she saw a tremor run through his arms and hands as he paused momentarily, resting against the saddle.

"Why don't you sleep for a little while? I will keep watch."

He shook his head. "We will sleep tonight. For now, I want to get as far away from the border as possible. Here- I'll give you a step up into the saddle."

"_Merci_," she murmured as he handed her up into the saddle.

"_De rein_, _mademoiselle._"


	12. The Far End of the World

It was Ella who first noticed the gypsies. Only a few days into Tartary, Erik had been scanning the small market-day crowd for the Persian guard – the nearest and most present danger. He had almost overlooked them until she clasped his arm suddenly.

"Look!" she whispered excitedly, and he followed her eyes across the small street to the ring of brightly colored tents and gaudily decorated wagons. A few signs promised fortunes, card readings, and herbs; the men of the camp hawked their wares loudly, entertaining the crowd. "They have fortunes – shall we have ours read?" she asked playfully, turning to look at him with a smile.

Erik felt his heart lurch up to his throat in a moment of irrational panic as the noise of the tents seemed to grow and rush in his ears. He quickly steered the horse past the tents, weaving his way down the dusty street until the market's bustle drowned out the sounds of the small troupe.

Ella had turned around in her saddle as far as she could, watching the band as she followed slowly.

"There are too many people here," he said uneasily as she lingered, "Let's stop at the next town."

"No," she replied triumphantly, turning sharply down a small alley. "We have to stop here – they have a bookseller!"

The first book was _The Mad Duke of Highborn Park_. Ella had nearly begged the tattered copy off the seller, who finally agreed to part with it for a princely sum. They took turns reading it aloud by the campfire each night as they bedded down in the lonely grasslands of the steppe. It was unapologetically horrible.

And Ella – Ella had laughed through nearly the entire novel. It was a light, musical sound in the Tartary night, and one he was unaccustomed to hearing.

"You have no taste in books," he finally observed in mock disapproval as she met the flight of the couple into the dark countryside with a fit of giggles. With a long glance, he went back to the prose, adding in melodramatic builds to the ridiculous words. "_As the virtuous and fainting Honoria looked upon her beloved in utter despair, she clutched her pet chicken – her only friend in this cruel, cruel world. _At least they won't starve," he observed, rewarded by a snort the Sultana would have never allowed in her harem. Clearing his throat loudly, he read on in a clanging baritone, "_Do not despair, declared the maligned duke – I need naught but your blessed smile, the light of your sainted brow_ – and the chicken – _to brighten this dark night of despairing gloom."_

"It did not mention the chicken," Ella protested, moving next to him and snatching the book out of his hands.

"It was implied."

She pulled a face, signaling her doubt, and read on silently for a few minutes before folding it in her lap. "I give up. The ending is as bad as the rest of it."

"You have to see it through now – you can't leave it unfinished."

"It's a disaster!" she protested, smiling.

"Ah, well – of course you couldn't have known it would be this bad from the title."

She fixed him with a look, the smile still warm on her face, and opened the book again. "Prepare yourself –things will only get worse from here. You must promise to read the part of the duke – I can't be entirely responsible for the rest."

"Agreed," he told her. She was pressed against him in the cool night, shoulder to shoulder and so close he could feel the movements of her arm as she turned each page.

_Traveling together, _he realized with surprise, _is very different than traveling alone_

…

Erik was standing in a marketplace near the Russian border when the prickly, uncomfortable sensation crawled across his neck like a warning bell.

_She is gone._

_Again._

The knowledge struck him suddenly, and he knew without a doubt that when he turned away from the market stall and its desperately uncomfortable clerk Ella would no longer be standing behind him. The shopkeeper kept up his wildly optimistic bartering, droning on about the quality of his wares while eyeing the mask with bulging eyes. Erik scowled, returning the stare with impatient distaste. The man blanched, but showed no sign of accelerating his sales pitch.

_Where the hell has she gone?_

"Done," he interrupted hurriedly, closing the deal on a price nearly two times the worth of the small supply of food gathered before him.

The market was small – a local gathering of herdsman and traders. Like the rest of Tartary, it seemed thrown together without regard to country or custom - the billowing robes of a Persian, the stiff wool tunic of a Cossack, the colorful kerchief of a shepherd's wife all mingled together in the small crowd. After several long minutes he finally located Ella in front of a faded cart, bargaining spiritedly with a combination of Russian, Persian, and sign language. After a moment she beamed at the vendor, handed over some coins, and received a small leather book in return.

"You shouldn't leave like that," he told her accusingly when she walked over, the book securely tucked beneath her arm.

"No one was paying any attention to me. Not here," she replied breezily, smiling and squinting in the brisk wind sweeping across the plain. "Imagine finding booksellers here – I feel sometimes like we are at the far end of the world – beyond it, somehow."

Erik silently agreed – the steppe had stretched on for miles, unfamiliar and vast as they threaded up the eastern side of the Caspian towards the Russian provinces. The combination of the wide grasslands and great mountains gave the area a lonely beauty, and fellow travelers were thankfully scarce.

"We are not as far from Persia as it seems," he reminded her anyways, as they retrieved the horses. "What book did you buy?"

"_Sense and Sensibility_ – the book keeper recommended it."

"What is it about?"

"It's a novel about two sisters and their courtships."

"There wasn't anything else?"

"If it is bad, we can trade it for something else as soon as we can," she laughed, patting the gray pony affectionately. "Besides, we can't read about wars, ghosts, and intrigue all the time."

"No- you can also read about architecture. Or art, music, history, Shakespeare, Dickens…" he continued the list, smiling. She shook her head firmly.

"No more of Dickens and his villains – this time, it is a tale of two sisters."

"As long as it is not _The Mad Duke_."

That night next to the campfire, she opened the book to read by the dim light.

"The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance…"

Erik watched her as she read, the light warm against her bright hair and shadows playing across the lines of her throat and hands as she turned the pages.

_She is happy – happy to be free of the Sultana, happy to be free of the harem, happy to be going home. _

Persia seemed to fall of her shoulders with each mile put between them and the border. Erik had not realized how heavily her captivity had sat upon her - in her worry, adding caution to her kindness, and in her hard and desperate determination. The change was definite – even in these rough and uncertain conditions. Her eyes were eager; she walked boldly through the strangers in the market. She laughed freely.

Erik had found Persia harder to put behind him. The nightmares that had come periodically seemed to intensify without the calming influence of opium, and his arms were only now healed from the slow and miserable withdrawal of the past few months.

"Why are you frowning?" Ella's voice interrupted his thoughts, drawing him back to the tiny camp they had made.

"No reason. Do you like the book?"

"Yes, I think so," she replied, shutting its cover thoughtfully. "Are you looking forward to being in Russia next week?"

"I am looking forward to reaching the court – I am done with camping," he replied, and absently rubbed his wrist.

Ella placed her hand over his to still the motion, a familiar gesture now. She smoothed the back of his fingers with her own, and smiled.

"I think you should put a winter garden into the new house," she observed.

"It is only a summer house."

"But surely some servants will be there all year. If there was an indoor garden they could grow things during the winter for their use, keep strawberries, weather over flowers for spring – if I lived there I would have a winter garden…"

They talked of the summer house until the fire died down. Like every night, they lay close together, only a breath away. He listened to her measured breathing rise and fall as he drifted off to sleep, her whispered prayers for their journey still keeping watch in the air around them. The feeling was like the palace, before the Sultana had ruined it; like the starting note of a song calling out in the stillness.

…

Just before the Russian border, they stopped for supplies. The market was larger, the roads more heavily traveled now, and Erik knew their days of safely camping along the route were quickly drawing to an end. Leaving Ella alone at their camp, he carefully threaded his way into the town's market.

The familiar cry and bustle of the Russian voices hit him and for a moment an image from the past flashed before his mind – the brightly colored gypsy tents, the cry of the announcers as they collected the fees for their acts in eastern Russia. The mechanical numbness that had finally covered him like a cold shroud once he gave up looking at the faces, and schooled himself to be deaf to the cries…

A passerby stared, and Erik forced his legs to move him forward, making the small purchases they would need for the next leg of their journey before walking, then running back towards their secluded camp.

He reached the tent, breathless, and stooped put down the packages and greet Ella when every nerve in his body went tense.

_There is a stranger in the tent_.

A Russian woman in a dove gray dress was impudently sorting through Ella's tiny cache of books and toiletries. Erik cleared his throat threateningly, and the woman stood to look at him with a careless rush of European skirts and petticoats.

_And Ella's fair, blue eyes. _

"Well?" she asked him, shyly, her pale hands carefully smoothing the front of her skirts. He almost didn't recognize her – the slender body that had shown plainly under flowing Persian silks was hidden now beneath layers of wool and lace hemmings.

"You don't look at all like you did in Persia."

"Is that so bad?"

"Where did you get it?" he asked, ignoring the question.

"I traded the rest of my Persian clothes for this – there was a caravan headed south, and the women were interested. They especially liked the blue, which bought this and the cloak," she explained, gesturing to a rough riding cloak in chocolate brown wool.

"You changed all of your clothes?"

"I can't very well wear my old clothes through Russia," she laughed. "I assumed you would change, too. Very soon the Persian styles will attract attention." She finished folding her few underclothes and turned to him, her head tilted to one side. "Don't you like them? I want to look like the ladies in the court."

He looked at the plain dress, the rough wool below the face flushed pink with pleasure. "You look like very much like a lady."

She smiled, and began talking of Russia and St. Petersburg. Erik answered where appropriate, watching the foreign movements of her corseted body and buttoned sleeves.

They bore little trace of the girl that was his in Persia.

**Thank you everyone for reading, and especially to those who have been kind enough to add a story alert or include this story in your favorites. Thank you ****so much**** to those who have left reviews – I love reading your thoughts and reactions! The next chapters in Russia are the beginning of the second arc – I hope you like the direction. : ) **


	13. Display

The first sign that made Ella believe they were truly, finally in Russia were the changes in the roads. Erik explained that Russia was known for its corduroy roads – paved with whole trees each year until they sunk some twenty deep into the ground, each season's resting on top of the previous. Snow was beginning to flurry as they made their way north past the birch forests of Moscow, a precursor to the onslaught of white that was sure to follow. As they drew closer to Novgorod Oblast, she was unrepentantly excited. Erik, she noticed, had lapsed into silence as they followed the curving lines of the roads closer and closer to the town.

The road ran along a hill above Valdai before dropping down and running through the center of the town, affording a view of the buildings and people in the small valley. Ella drank in the sight of the market's stalls and wagons, thronged with people dressed in heavy tunics and long kerchiefs. The narrow streets buzzed with people, selling and buying vegetables, seed, and cloth.

Erik swore softly and profusely beside her.

"Market day," he offered curtly at her questioning look, curbing his mount to a halt. Glancing back at the road behind them, he wordlessly urged the horse down the incline.

The peasants at the edge of the market stared at them, eyes lingering on Erik's mask, but Ella ignored them until a harsh shout startled her out of her thoughts.

"труп!"

She blinked in surprise, her mind registering the word but at a loss to its translation.

"Hey, труп!" a coarse-looking man standing behind a mule cart barked. As the man neared her horse, Ella could see that he had been enjoying the fall vodka for some time – his clothes were disheveled, and his narrowed eyes bore the sloppy, drunken look she had come to recognize in some of the court's less devout. She curbed the mare, already dancing skittishly away from the stranger, and turned to Erik.

He had gone stiff beside her, like a man turned to stone. He urged the horse forward suddenly, leaving Ella to follow as best she could until they were buried in the bustle of the market. Turning down a side street, he dismounted, tossing the horses' reins through the ring of a mounting block and a coin to the boy attending it before handing her down.

"We should get food."

They lurked about the outside of the market, Ella following silently as Erik quietly and quickly ordered the staples they would need on the final leg of their journey. Her earlier excitement had dimmed – she found herself watching the peasants and vendors watch them, noting the odd glances and whispers that followed in their wake.

She was surveying wares of a local weaver, one eye on the fabric and the other on the weaver when the now-familiar shout cut through the noise of the market.

"труп! Hey, ugly!" The driver walked towards Erik, swaying. "Thought the devil had finally got you; Heard you were as dead as that head of yours. Doing shows again, труп?"

Erik remained still, and unexpectedly, it was her temper that snapped first and carried her from the stall to the edge of the street to right under the driver's nose.

"I think you need to leave – you are far too drunk and stupid to be wandering the streets! There will be no _shows_, unless you intend to give one as a human pig!" she bit out in broken Russian.

She did not quite catch the threat Erik whispered under his breath when the mule driver raised his hand to her to push her aside, but she had a clear image of the blood draining from the driver's face before she found herself yanked roughly down a muddy alley. This time it was Erik biting out his words, his eyes like flame in the dim light.

_"What do you think you are doing."_

"I was telling that horrible creature exactly what I thought of him!"

"Do you want me to have to kill everyone we meet, from here to the Channel?" The rage had not cleared when he ran a hand over his face and mask in frustration. "We can not _attract_ attention. If we are murdered here no one will ask any questions. Do you understand? They will kill you too, or worse – no god-fearing woman travels with a monster," he finished bitterly.

"He had no right- "

"Do you think I _need you_ to protect me from passing slurs?"

He was snarling now, and Ella had the uncomfortable thought that she did not entirely know _why_.

"What did he mean by shows, Erik?"

"What do you think? I'm quite a performer, didn't you know? Long before Persia." His shoulders and hands were tense, like a string pulled far too tightly. After a moment she realized he was waiting for her to speak.

"I - I am sorry." She moved to place her hand on his sleeve, but he jerked it away angrily and turned away from her.

"_I don't want your apologies_."

In Persia, he would have turned on his heel, a cutting comment or disdainful curl of his lip, like a king exiting his court. Here in Russia, she stood in the dank little alley and watched as he slipped silently back into the throng, his head dipped low to hid the black mask beneath the brim of his hat.

He was still angry and silent when night fell, miles away from the little country market. Ella could feel the lines of tension in his frame as he lay on his bedroll beside her, his back turned to her.

"Erik?"

"Go to sleep."

"Erik!" she placed a hand on his back, willing him to turn towards her. He turned, shifting away from her touch to regard her with dull, tired eyes. "What did _you_ mean by shows?" she asked gently.

The anger had drained inexplicably, leaving Erik feeling only weary and far older than his twenty-two years. Ella was looking at him, her sad eyes nearly black in the darkness. She never asked about the mask, and her willingness to ignore it and the disaster it covered had suited him. Europe meant freedom to her. It had meant captivity and hunger for him.

"Before I came to Persia, I traveled with a fair. Magic, some songs, and of course, my greatest asset as the finale." He paused, then forced himself to continue, to lay the ugly truth of it bare. "But even before that, when I was young, I was on display with a gypsy fair."

"What does труп mean?" she asked, her voice hovering just above a whisper.

"Corpse."

He watched her swallow hard, and wondered what face she had drawn in her mind to fill the unpleasant void left by the black velvet, who's imagined features she used to bridge over the bitter reality when she smiled at him and laughed. He let the memories come back then, the crowds surge in his mind as they had in his nightmares. The crowds, the fairs, the horrible feeling of helplessness.

He was started out of his recollections when Ella shifted under her coarse wool blanket, carefully closing half the distance between them. She held out her hand, palm up between them, her eyes fixed on his own with an unnamed request. After a moment of hesitation he moved closer, his body welcoming the warming comfort of hers in the cool night. When he placed his hand in hers she bent her head and kissed it lightly, smoothing the place with her thumb, then carefully pressed a kiss on the uncovered patch of skin stretching across his forehead.

He remained awake for hours after she fell asleep, staring into the night. When he moved he moved quietly, fingers working silently through the buckles of his saddlebag as he felt for the silver case he had hidden there. Soon after the Tartary border the opportunity had presented itself unexpectedly – Ella distracted by a book, and the sudden recognition of the wares inside a small stall. He found the case by touch, cool and heavy in his hand. The drug called to him, needy and insistent, and with shaking hands he filled the syringe and tied the tourniquet with the familiar, practiced motions by candlelight.

The smooth rush melted over him, welcoming him in its warm arms as the day began to dawn.


	14. Something of a Novelty

Ella stood nervously next to Erik in the portrait hall of Prince Fedorovich's St. Petersburg mansion, feeling very small and plain under the stern eyes of the family patriarchs. Erik glanced at her as she smoothed her skirts for the umpteenth time. He himself seemed coolly composed, standing perfectly still as they waited in silence for the Prince to appear. Out of the corner of her eye Ella saw a flash of brown and white in the corridor beyond the hall. A small girl peeked curiously around a doorway, then darted back behind the richly paneled walls. Her retreating steps echoed noisily through the corridors before veering off into a different wing of the estate, making the hall seem more vast and vacant than before.

Ella heard the Prince before she saw him, his voice booming through the hallways as he gave orders to his valet in Russian. Tall and athletic, he slapped his riding crop across the side of his boots and smiled broadly when he entered the hall. "So you have come at last – Excellent! I was beginning to think you would get held up by the snow and I would have to wait another year. Now that you are here, we can get to work!"

Without waiting for a response, the Prince turned to her and held out his hand. "Bonjour, mademoiselle!" he exclaimed, bending low over her hand to kiss it. Ella felt Erik stiffen beside her.

"This is Ella - _my wife_."

Smiling genially, the Prince corrected himself with a shake of his head. "Welcome, _Madame_! It is an honor. I hope your trip north was not a hard one?"

"No, thank you sir." Ella replied sincerely, "We came from the west, through Tartary - the countryside was quite lovely, and it was a fine ride."

To her surprise he bellowed in laughter. "A fine ride? Madame, you must be an exceptional horsewoman – I have heard cavalry swear they will ride through hell before they ride through Tartary, begging your pardon. Of course, the generals are soft these days… used to the comfortable life in the city. Well then, I think we can do better in St. Petersburg and show you comforts enough to make up for the journey, eh? Monsieur Erik," he stated, oblivious to the way Erik's mouth had thinned dangerously, "My man here will show to your to the place you requested. We will meet tomorrow to discuss our plans. Madame," he turned to her with a short, military bow, "Welcome. I hope you find your new home to your liking."

Driving through the city, they passed the Winter Palace, its white columns gleaming in the bright sunlight. The townhouse was several minutes away, sequestered on a quiet, elegant street just outside the Prince's fashionable district. Twenty minutes later found her in the foyer of their new home, listening to the housekeeper's nervous welcome.

_It is like I imagined England would be all those years in the harem – clean, pretty. Safe. _

Erik, she noticed, was stonily quiet as they made their way through the rooms. At the final bedroom, they dismissed the relieved housekeeper to her duties downstairs.

"The Prince seemed very nice," Ella offered up as soon as they were alone. Erik quickly stripped off his cravat, tossing it on the bed.

"They all do at first. He was pleased enough with _you_."

Ella felt a strange flip in her stomach, and casually looked out the window to avoid seeing his face. "Is that why you told him I was your wife?"

A beat of silence, and she could envision the impatient shrug of his shoulders as she fixed her attention on the dormant lime trees below. "I can hardly claim you as an apprentice."

His tone was strained, and she looked at him curiously before smiling. "Don't look so serious, Erik! You will see, Russia will be nothing like Persia. And he will love your plans. The house will finer than the Winter Palace – only smaller, of course."

The observation made him smile slightly, and Ella smiled back. "Imagine, this entire house ours! What will we do with all the bedrooms? It will be strange to have the housekeeper here, too – we have been alone for so long."

"From her expression, we may be alone again. You'll have room to keep your books, I suppose."

"I hope she stays for a few weeks, at least. I need to get a new dress – this one is so worn from the trip, and I don't want to look out of place while we are here. I would like to meet some of the people here – it would not hurt to know more people than the Prince."

"It will not help, either," Erik replied with a skeptical look. He gave her rough wool riding outfit a critical glance, then continued, "I will arrange to have some accounts opened for you in the stores nearby. Buy whatever you like."

From the enthusiasm of the clerks when she ventured into the local dressmakers' shops_, _Ella could only assume that he passed along this recommendation word for word.

After a week in St. Petersburg the housekeeper startled Ella one morning by appearing with a silver plate full of cards.

"Madame, may I presume are you at home this morning?" she asked, with quick look at Ella's new blue day gown.

"At home?"

"For visitors, Madame?"

"Oh!" Ella realized suddenly, remembering the custom. "Yes! Yes, I am at home! Who has called?"

"Mrs. Whitcomb, the wife of the British ambassador, the Princess Alexandra and her daughters, Princess Maria and Princess Zinaida Fedorovna, and the Countess Nikolaevna with her daughters, the ladies Natalia, Anya, and Natasha."

"So many?" Ella asked, her excitement faltering slightly. "the parlor must be stretched to its limit. Your court is very welcoming."

The housekeeper pinned her with a sharp look, then continued somewhat reluctantly. "There'll be more before the week is out, Madame. Usually they would trickle in with guests, if you saw the princesses at all, but _you_…they are all anxious to meet _you_."

A quick curtsey and she disappeared down the hall, leaving Ella to consider her prediction alone.

_How very reassuring._

Ella found the small, sunny parlor crammed full of the brightly colored skirts and dark curls of the Fedorovna sisters and their cousins. The youngest, Anya, came right to the point after the opening pleasantries. "Tell us about Persia – did you really live there? Did you see the Sultan, or," she lowered her voice to a whisper, "the harems? Is it true he has two hundred wives?"

"I don't think it is quite two hundred," Ella replied, a quick glance at the older women. Princess Alexandra and Countess Nikolaevna were leaning in, eyes as intent as their daughters' as the tea cooled its cups. Mrs. Whitcomb offered a sympathetic smile as she took a sip from her cup. "I have seen the Sultan, from a distance, and the harem." _From far to close_ – she amended silently.

The girls fired rapid questions over their mothers' token protests, slowly circling down towards what Ella came to realize was the true question of the visit.

"What of his face?" Anya demanded finally, her curiosity making her blunt. "What is wrong with it? Is it very terrible? Does he ever take the mask off?"

"It was…damaged…a long time ago. And no, he does not remove it," Ella replied carefully, skirting the distance between the truth and the question. _They would assume injury, of course, which would better serve our purposes here... _Seeing the eager questions in the girls' eyes, she tried to damper their enthusiasm. "It would be quite heartless to ask."

"And yet you married him?" Zinaida, breathed with wide eyes.

"Obviously," Maria cut in impatiently, "She would be quite ruined now if she hadn't, traveling alone with a man. Honestly!"

"You know very well what I meant," Zinaida shot back at her sister, never taking her eyes off Ella's face. "How ever did you come to be in Persia, and how ever did you come to marry? Was it very romantic?"

"Girls," their mother finally intervened with a disapproving glance.

Ella took a deep breath, looking at the mixture of eager, skeptical faces in front of her. The idea formed suddenly in her mind, opening like the pages of a book, and she looked at her audience appraisingly.

_They are asking for a story, one to discuss and repeat to their friends. And there is no reason they shouldn't have the best version possible… _

She leaned in ever so slightly, took a deep breath, and whispered, "It's a long story, really – but you see, he saved me from the Sultana's court. She would have killed us both if she had known…"

When the clock chimed on the hour, the Princess reluctantly rose to leave with her sister and daughters in tow. Only the English ambassador's wife, Mrs. Whitcomb, lingered.

"My dear, you must forgive them their curiosity – they are very young, and you are something of a novelty here," she took Ella's hand, pressing it kindly between her own. "Please say you will call on me – no interrogations, I promise."

Her round, open face was earnest, and Ella found herself genuinely returning her smile. "Yes, I will."

"I'm glad to hear it. _Au revoir_, dear – we will see each other again soon."

**A/N: Thank you, always, for your kind words & reviews! **


	15. Embers

Erik's prediction proved accurate: the housekeeper was gone within the second month. They discovered her absence when they woke, shivering, to find the fires out. Ella located her resignation folded neatly on the deserted kitchen table.

"Good," Erik declared with an unconcerned shrug when she showed him the note, "We don't need her, anyway."

"Maybe." Ella picked up the tea kettle from the shelf near the stove and gave it a small shake. Shards of ice rattled against the cold copper immediately, confirming her suspicion that the temperature in the house had dropped dramatically since the night before. "I have a closet full of gowns that button up the back, and we have six fireplaces and the kitchen stove that all need to be lit."

Erik disappeared into the cellar, returning moments later with the coal bucket. "I am surprised she stayed as long as she did," he said as he coaxed the banked coals into a roaring blaze. "She looked as though she could bolt at any moment. Find a girl to come during the day for the cooking and the cleaning." Sitting back on his heels, he held his hands out in front of the oven door, gauging the temperature before latching it shut. "We would have the place to ourselves, like before." He looked up at her, his eyes bright gold in the sunlight streaming through the icy windows. His mouth was set in a small grin as if he knew he had made the winning point, and she could not help smiling back. The housekeeper and her sullen nervousness had been the one blot on the pretty, comfortable new home.

She moved to his side, holding out her hands over the stove's warming glow. "We will wake up with frozen fingers each morning. It is still only December," she reminded him in mock protest.

He surprised her by learning forward to take hold of her cold hands. "I think your fingers will be safe." Holding them close to his mouth, he breathed on them then pressed them between his palms – a game, a show of warming them. She felt his breath move across her skin, felt the barest graze of his mouth spark like a shock on her fingertips as he played out the charade. His hair was still mussed from sleep, falling over the edge of the black mask as he looked up at her. His expression turned from laughter to confusion, and she belatedly realized he was waiting for her response.

Ella turned quickly to hide the heat rising in her face. "We will do without her. I will make tea." Behind her, she heard him rise easily and begin to look for bread and the last night's leftovers.

_The place to ourselves, like before_. The words sent a strange thrill down her back when he said them. Especially now, when everything was suddenly so _unlike_ before.

When _they_ were so unlike before.

Erik looked like a different person compared to those last weeks in Persia, and the long trip from Tartary. His skin had lost the deathly pallor, his cuffs stayed white all day instead of staining red by evening, and the lines of his body had filled out over the weeks of rest and hot food. When she caught a glimpse of herself on occasion, laughing in the gilt mirrors of their home, she did not recognize the stranger looking back at her. The difference caught her breath – a warm, wonderful realization that had no name.

Erik promptly took advantage of their new solitude to dismantle the small piano in the parlor. She watched over a book as he tuned it carefully, spending the better part of the evening coaxing pitches out of its neglected strings.

"What can you play?" she asked as he sounded a few final chords and began to reassemble the case.

He looked at her and paused, almost shyly, before sitting down in front of the keys. "What would you like to hear?"

Ella paused, and hummed a few fragments of a remembered song.

He picked up the tune effortlessly, the sound filling the room. The song started simply, then deepened to gain new chords and movements before transforming into something else entirely – something beautiful and longing, as tender and familiar as a caress.

"It's beautiful," she breathed when the final notes stilled. "What is it called?"

"_Ella_."

"What is it really called?"

"_Ella_. The composer must have known you," he said lightly, already moving on to a new song. "This one, though – this is Mozart."

Late in the night, they sat before the fire in her room as the logs caught flame and began to burn. Ella watched the embers flicker and dance as Erik described the progress on the Prince's summer house.

"It is almost the perfect project, Ella," he concluded reluctantly, as if he did not trust the words. "He wants a showpiece, something new and unlike anything his neighbors would have. None of the usual slaving after the old styles. And he stays out of my way, which is the best of all. If he had the money the tsar has to put behind an estate we could make a showpiece for the entire country." He turned to look at her, then added carelessly, "It is just as well – at this size it will be completed by late spring, and you will be back on your way to England. Have you sent your letter yet?"

"My letter?"

"To London, for a solicitor."

"Oh." The letter sat half-finished in her desk drawer, started and revised a dozen times but somehow never quite ready to be mailed. Ella had made the mistake of mentioning it to Mrs. Whitcomb when her new friend had asked about her family. She had been eager to help, writing to her solicitor immediately to make introductions over Ella's half-hearted protests. Ella had already received his reply; it now only remained to reply to him with details for the search. "I have not mailed it yet. When I told Mrs. Whitcomb I might have family in London, she insisted on helping. I suppose I will write to her solicitor. She has been very kind. The Prince's daughter, Anya, has too – she came back yesterday, and asked me to call on her."

"She came to visit to ask you to visit?"

"It is the custom," Ella explained. "Also - she invited us to a ball."


	16. Editing

The ball was a terrible idea – throngs of petty officials and courtiers crowded into hot, noisy rooms full of mirrors and gossips. Had he been alone, Erik would have left immediately.

_No, had I been alone I never would have come._

Beside him Ella seemed to glow, her entire body singing with excitement. Her ball gown was a sleek expanse of silver silk, the plunging neckline framing her slender shoulders and curves. It reminded him of her presentation silks in Persia – again, she seemed wrapped up like a gift, shimmering in the flickering candlelight. Here, however, she was smiling brightly with cheeks flushed with anticipation.

"Erik, I see the Ambassador and Mrs. Whitcomb – we should go greet them," she whispered, peering out from the quiet alcove he had finally managed to find amid the throng of guests.

"I have nothing to say to either of them."

"Mrs. Whitcomb is very nice, and is anxious to meet you."

"_Why_?" His suspicions were confirmed when she colored briefly, then looked up with a proud smile.

"Because," she confided, her eyes playful, "I believe she is a bit smitten with you – she thinks you are quite the hero."

"What would lead her to that delusion?"

"I told her how you rescued me, at great risk, from the evil Sultana. That you swore to take me home again, and that you have escorted me personally and in the face of grave dangers."

Erik looked at her proud, completely unrepentant face, and did not know what to say. The truth of Persia flashed through his mind – the harem girl offered up like a wine to use and discard, the pain-wracked games of the Sultana's twisted boredom – erased neatly in a moment as if they had never occurred. "You will burn in hell for telling lies like that."

"That is a fine threat from an atheist. Besides, it is _not_ a lie. I simply left out the less appropriate parts, and kept the rest. It just needed a little editing."

"I have let you read too many novels. What did you say of the mask?"

"I told her that there was a grievous accident a long time ago-"

"Yes, I was born. "

"-and that you did not take it off. Or talk about it," she finished firmly, as if these were the magic words that would reverse a lifetime of experience. He suddenly realized that she believed it might be enough – that resolution and a good story might weave a web that would overcome reality. She had never been outside of the harem, and in her world there had been far greater monsters to fear than him.

"Ella," he said, trying to find the words to explain, "it will not end there."

She lifted her chin stubbornly. "It will. I will make it."

Mrs. Whitcomb was fanning herself rapidly, her round, plump face flushed scarlet beneath silver hair as she addressed her husband and scanned the crowd. Erik caught the end of her conversation as they approached. "… like a highwayman, and his wife – goodness, she is dressed as pretty as a porcelain doll. Such a waste in a foreign court, but they are young…Oh, Ella! How good to see you, my dear!"

Ella walked up to the older woman with a smile, and gave her hands a quick squeeze in greeting. "Hello, Mary. May I present my husband?"

Erik nearly groaned as Mrs. Whitcomb's eyes lit up. "I am so pleased to meet you – Ella tells us you had the most thrilling time in Persia."

_Thrilling? Her editing must have been fantastical. _"So I hear."

Mrs. Whitcomb blinked in surprise at the terse answer, and beside her Ella's smile wavered momentarily before fixing firmly in place. Greeting Mr. Whitcomb, she smoothly turned the conversation to the ball itself, commenting on the beauty of the room and the company. Erik kept half an ear on the conversation while surveying the crowd. When the topic turned to the beauty of the music, he suddenly found himself drawn back into the conversation at Ella's stammered protests.

"Of course you dance, dear – what young lady doesn't? I have been remiss – where is your dance card? Your husband can not expect to monopolize all your dances – if you do not mind, I will take the liberty of filling it for you. Now, which will you dance together?"

Erik turned to find the older woman looking at him expectantly, and Ella's abashed face flushed in a curious mix of anticipation and embarrassment. He cursed inwardly, but before he could respond she replied smoothly, "My husband is indisposed tonight…and I am afraid I would not know the steps. There were no balls in Persia."

Mrs. Whitcomb met her protests with a brisk roll of her eyes. "Nonsense – anyone can do a simple waltz. You do not mind if I steal away your wife, sir? I do promise to return her shortly."

"Not at all," Erik replied evenly through his teeth.

"It is settled then! Come…you have already met Prince Fedorovich, and I will introduce you to my friend, the French Ambassador…"

As they disappeared into the throng of guests, the Ambassador chuckled. "Hope you did not plan on leaving early – if my wife has her way, that will be the last you see of them for hours." Erik saw Whitcomb's eyes travel longingly out to the garden, where an assortment of men stood dispersed across the dark patio amid rising plumes of smoke. "It's beastly warm in here – I don't suppose you take a pipe?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Erik saw Ella begin the next waltz with a tall officer, sinking into a graceful curtsey before taking the floor. He ignored the Ambassador's question. "Where could I find a drink?"

Whitcomb's eyes lit up, and he nodded towards the door. "I could use a vodka myself. They crush too many people into these infernal ballrooms, but Russian vodka - it has no equal."

The patio was quiet compared the bustle of the ballroom, the freezing air perfumed with the smell of pipes and cigar smoke. Whitcomb greeted several of the men by name – mainly military men and minor nobles – and within moments liveried footmen produced a wealth of glasses and bottles on shining silver trays.

"So…" An officer they identified as Mikhail drawled out over a shot. "I hear you built a monument of sorts in Persia?"

"I built a palace in Persia," Erik corrected coolly. "With all offices of state."

"Really?" Mikhail paused, considering. "Well, I hope you have an engineer on retainer – Fedorovich wants to build this estate in a lagoon, and I have been telling him he will have to move the site."

"I have built on sand, I can build on water." Erik drained the vodka in one fiery gulp, relishing the slow burn as it made its way down his throat. "I understand most of St. Petersburg is propped up on top of a marsh, besides."

Another man, a general from the decorations on his jacket, snorted and downed a quick shot of his own before placing the small glass upside down on a footman's silver tray. "What Mikhail means by all this drivel is this: what are the women like in Persia? God, what I wouldn't give to be surrounded by a harem."

"Let your mistress hear you say that and the only woman you will be surrounded by is your wife," Mikhail retorted easily as the others laughed. "Would be a damn sight more interesting, though, than watching some young miss pound out a song on the pianoforte later tonight." Erik saw Mikhail look off into the distance and noticed that his eyes hardened momentarily. The look passed in a second, and he resumed his fixed smile as he finished off his drink. "If you will excuse me, gentlemen."

The others continued talking as Mikhail disappeared through the patio doors into the brightly lit ballroom. Through the clear, bright windows, Erik saw Ella deep in conversation with a dark-haired girl on the opposite side of the room. When she saw Mikhail approaching, the girl whispered in Ella's ear and walked away quickly, disappearing behind a stand of ferns. Mikhail hesitated too long, and Mrs. Whitcomb appeared at Ella's side, smiling as she led her away in the opposite direction.

"-do you, Monsieur Erik?" Erik turned to find the general from before looking at him, and realized he had asked a question.

"Pardon?"

"Do you wager?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Erik followed Ella across the floor as a new dance began. She curtseyed lowly, smiling at her partner. "What is the game?"

At midnight Erik found Ella waltzing with Prince Fedorovich, and met her on the dance floor wraps in hand.

The Prince greeted him warmly. "Monsieur Erik! I was just telling your lovely wife of your plans. The best in all of Russia. Surely you are not leaving so soon?"

"I am afraid we must. Thank you for your hospitality."

"Nothing – nothing at all. You will return, of course."

Erik looked at the Prince's ruddy and cheerful face, then at Ella's hopeful look, and forced out the words. "Of course. And I will see you tomorrow about the plans we discussed."

The ride home was cold and brisk, the winter snow falling steadily to cover the streets with a fresh layer of white. "Where have you been all night?" Ella asked from the depths of her wraps, peering out through her the white fur of her hood. "I looked for you several times, but you were not in the ballroom."

"I was on the patio."

"As cold as it is?"

"There was a lot of vodka."

"Oh."

Erik looked at her profile, her eyes scanning the streets as they passed by. The moonlight glinted off the deep snow, reflecting a silvery light across her pale skin, the snow-covered houses and road.

"Did you enjoy yourself?"

Her mouth turned up slightly at the corners: a small, contented smile. "Yes, very much. I wish you had stayed. You would have liked the music – they played the most beautiful dances. How did you like the Ambassador?"

Erik shrugged. "Did you know he can drink the Russian Court under the table?"

"Mr. Whitcomb? You must be joking."

"Why is that funny?" he asked as she started to laugh.

"Poor Mary – he has convinced her that he only takes a little brandy for his bad knee."


	17. Anya

Anya appeared at the door of the townhouse, long after the normal time for callers. Her dress was impeccable, her dark hair beautifully arranged, and her face was set in stone.

"Mikhail is my fiancé," she scowled over her teacup. "And unless he manages to fall off his horse and die, I am stuck with him."

Ella thought the princess made a sad figure, sitting like a woman awaiting an executioner as she pronounced this sentence on herself. In one of her sisters, it might have been melodrama – in Anya, it was furious despair.

"Why must you marry him if you don't like him?"

"He has no title to speak of, but he has a great fortune. His father and mine are old friends – it has been arranged forever."

Ella thought of the Prince, with his frank manners and open smile. "Have you told your father you do not love him?"

"No one marries for love, Ella," Anya snapped, then sighed. "Mikhail wants the match, our fathers want the match, and I am to learn to live with it count my blessings. And that," she finished, "is why I had to leave last night. I avoid him wherever possible."

"I am sorry," Ella said carefully. "Could your father be persuaded to a different match?"

Anya eyed her warily, and Ella realized she had hit a nerve.

"You did see us, then, in the garden."

"It would have been hard to miss you, Anya," Ella said gently. She had been looking for Erik – he disappeared early in the night – when she stumbled onto a small courtyard off an empty parlor. The young officer had moved in front of Anya quickly, but not before Ella had seen her stricken look – and realized that the young man was not part of the company inside.

"Please, please promise not to mention him. We were careless to let anyone find us – I thank God it was only you." Her eyes were dark and surprisingly desperate as she made her request. "Ella, they would drum him out of the military, or worse, if they knew."

The front door opened, and Ella recognized the familiar sound of Erik's key on the hall table. Anya demanded quickly, "Promise!"

Erik appeared in the doorway in shirtsleeves, his long fingers already tugging at the cravat at his neck. "Ella, have you seen a letter from…." he trailed off uncomfortably when he saw Anya, with her strained, white expression. "Hello."

"Hello, monsieur," the princess answered properly.

He looked at Ella quizzically, and she smiled up at him helplessly. "Hello, Erik! Anya, may I present my husband? Erik, this is Princess Anya."

He replied with a short, formal bow. "Princess." Out of the corner of her eye, Ella saw Anya's wide-eyed stare as she gaped at the mask, then guiltily looked down at her hands.

"How was your day? Would you care for some tea?" Ella asked lightly next to Anya's strained silence.

Erik caught her eye, and replied in kind. "It was well, thank you. I did not mean to interrupt, Ella. I will be back in the study."

"There is tea in the kitchen, if you would like it. I will be back after the hour."

He nodded, and turned to Anya. "Good day, Princess."

Ella watched as him as he disappeared from the room, his footsteps fading down the hall towards the kitchen. When she turned back to Anya, the younger girl was regarding her with surprise. "You actually like him, don't you?" she whispered slowly, "I had thought it must be an act…"

"I…we _are_ married, Anya," Ella remembered to reply with the story, flustered.

Anya dismissed her protest with a flick of her hand. "That does not mean anything. Believing he might care for you was a little easier, of course, although it was hardly a given. But you _understand_…you _will_ help me and not say anything, won't you, Ella?"

Ella looked at Anya's hand, nervously clenching her expensive skirts into a mess of wrinkles. She slowly shook her head. "No, I won't say anything, Anya."

"_Thank you_," Anya sighed. "I will see you at the dance tomorrow night?"

"Of course."

"You must stay with Mary and I – he will not dare cause a scene with the both of you."

"What about your sister, your mother? They would surely be more help…"

"No, they will only excuse themselves so we have more time together alone – and I do not need another second with him alone, as long as I live. You, Mary, and I – he won't start a fight with you there." Anya stood to leave, pinning on her hood and wrapping her heavy veil over her face. "Ella, do you have a wedding ring?"

"No – it wasn't the custom in Persia. Why?"

"You should have one for Russia. It looks odd for a married woman not to have one. Especially," she added softly, "when you are fond of your husband."

Ella found Erik surrounded by blueprints in the study. His sleeves were turned back carelessly at the cuffs, his forearms smudged with ink and graphite as he worked and reworked the math and plans for the inside rooms. Every now and then he frowned before making a note on the document.

"Anya has gone home."

"What was wrong with her?"

"Lover's quarrel," she sidestepped lightly. He nodded, already returned to his work. "Why did you agree to bring me out of Persia, to bring me here with you?"

Erik stopped his calculation and looked up at her, his eyes tracing the lines of her face until she felt she could not stand the silence.

"Why?" he echoed slowly, the skin of his forehead creasing into small lines just above the edge of the mask. "I killed many people in Persia, Ella. And I don't regret many of them. Drunk men, brutal men, thieves, murderers, and they would have all been too happy to kill me instead. But I could not let them kill you, the first night or any night. I thought you knew." He walked over to stand next to her, still studying her eyes. Ella took a step forward and suddenly they were too close, far to close, and she imagined she could smell the scent of soap and coal smoke on his shirt. He stepped back, and the mood shifted as he gave her a careless, lopsided grin. "Not wanting to bed me on sight is not usually a capital offense – it was just not your night."

"Of course –forget I mentioned it," she replied, and colored red. _What where you expecting_? she silently scolded herself. _What did you want to hear?_

"Why are you thinking of Persia again?" he asked curiously.

"It was just – something Anya said."


	18. How Other People Live

Erik considered the St. Petersburg court fairly perceptive, on the whole.

_Even with all of Ella's fairytales, they know this marriage is a front._

_The only question now is if she can be seduced away._

The balls continued – as much as he disliked them, he could not refuse Ella's requests. Erik noted that she had taken on an endearing way of glancing back at him while she danced. Her role of the affectionate wife was played very well – Erik could only assume it was what made the game so enticing to her partners. Tonight, it was a naval captain who was trying his hand, monopolizing her dance card and posturing wildly in hopes of impressing her.

"Back so soon, _cherie_?" Erik asked as the man returned her reluctantly after a dance, dropping the false familiarity for the satisfaction of watching the officer puff up with irritation.

Ella smiled at him, then at the captain as she thanked him for the waltz. "_Cherie_?" she asked when her partner was out of earshot. Her expression faltered inexplicably, then regained its pleasant mask as she looked out at the dance floor. "We have pet names now?"

"We have an entire romantic history– why not?"

She did not laugh. "Surely that is not so bad, considering?"

"We did well enough on our own in Persia."

"I hid for months in your apartment, and we snuck out of the country through a drain in the middle of the night!" She took his hand and held it in hers, lingering as her fingertips brushed like fire over the back of his in an odd, new gesture. "I think St. Petersburg is very nice."

Something cold brushed pressed against his skin, and he looked down to see a heavy ruby ring on her left hand. Another partner came to claim her, and with a backwards glance she was drawn back to the floor. Erikthrew back a shot and stepped towards a quieter corner of the room, savoring the slow burn as the vodka slid down his throat.

_An accident, a rescue, a wife. It is a beautiful lie._

Two matrons moved in front of him near the edge of the floor, blocking his view of Ella and chattering furiously in French. Erik set his glass in a windowsill and began to edge away when their conversation caught his attention.

"There she is!" The older one said, the long white plume in her hair bobbing jerkily. "The Persian girl is dancing with the count – again! And both of them married!"

Her companion was prettier, with auburn hair and a fan she fluttered impatiently beneath a pointed chin. "She is _demimonde_, of course – what else could you expect?"

"Surely not - she hangs about Whitcomb's wife and Princess Anya like a schoolgirl."

"So she is discreet – or is working up a lover by making him wait. You can hardly blame her for wanting away from that ghastly architect. She is lucky – no man would forget she bedded that creature if she didn't have Persia to add to the appeal. Watch - she will make sure she is settled soon. Before the winter court has a chance to begin making summer plans."

Erik felt the anger rise up in his throat as they stood, preening behind their fans and tight-lipped smiles as they watched Ella across the hall. He stepped in between them abruptly, relishing how the auburn one jumped with a strangled squeak. "She is lovely, is she not?" he asked conversationally. "I could see why you would be worried about your lover." The auburn woman's head snapped towards him with a satisfying violence, her mouth sputtering in indignant protests. Her friend froze before grabbing her arm and pulling her away with quick, running steps.

The dance ended, and Ella was quickly claimed by Mr. Whitcomb and Anya. Anya's face blanched suddenly, and she quickly took Ella's arm and walked out of the room. Mikhail approached Mary Whitcomb slowly, watching their retreating backs with a measured look. They did not reappear until long after Mikhail had given up and left the room.

Erik caught Ella alone early in the morning, when Anya finally departed with her sister and mother. "Anya cannot seem to do without you," he observed.

"No, poor thing. She has gone home to rest." The orchestra paused, picking up a new tune. The violins sang softly into the ballroom, lilting out their song as the tired dancers began to retreat from the floors. Ella's voice pulled him back from the melody. "They are starting a new waltz, and I have no partner - will you dance with me?"

He looked at her quickly, but her eyes were earnest. "No – there are people everywhere."

She frowned, then held out her hand. "Come with me." He followed her out of the ballroom, into a small parlor far off the main hall. In the dim light she looked up at him, her lips flickering tentatively into a half smile. "There are no people now."

The music drifted, muted, into the room from the ballroom. He could smell the scent of her perfume, feel the light pressure of her hand on his arm. He stepped into her arms, holding her tightly around the waist and turned with her in the slow steps of the waltz.

"I feel badly for Anya," she whispered against his shoulder. "Her fiancé is Mikhail, but she does not love him."

"Surely she could find another."

"No, their fathers arranged it years ago, and he will not release her. It would be terrible to be married to someone you didn't love," she finished softly.

Her body shifted subtlety as they moved through the simple steps, and he was achingly aware of the slope of her hips and swell of her breasts, highlighted by her ball gown. Even with the corset, she moved fluidly – a holdover from the years of training in the harem.

Erik thought of the auburn woman's prediction – _she will make sure she is settled soon. Before the winter court has a chance to begin making summer plans. _"Has your lawyer sent any news about your uncle?"

"No, not yet." Her tone was light, unconcerned, Erik thought about the Russian count, and the officer.

"I wrote to a contact of my own in London – I am expecting a letter back, shortly, on what he found of your family."

"You found a barrister?" she asked, disappointment lining her face in the dim light.

"Yours is incredibly slow – at this rate, we will be in London by the time he replies. Two detectives are better than one, anyway – one of them will be sure to find your uncle," he replied defensively.

"Of course. Thank you." She leaned her head against his shoulder until he could no longer see her face.

_You should learn – you must learn – to give her up. _

It was nearly three in the morning when they finally returned home. Ella insisted he stay with her after building up the fire in her room, and they both lingered around the grate as the banked coals began to warm to life, thawing out frozen fingers and faces in near silence. After a few minutes he bid her good night – she would not meet his eyes – and retreated to the cold solitude of his own room. A few stokes at the coals and the fire began to burn. Without waiting for the room to warm Erik stripped off the cravat and lay down across the edge of the bed.

Ella slipped in the door moments later with a short knock, as if materializing from his mind. "I am caught– can you help?" She turned her back, revealing a row of tangled buttons and laces just out of reach from her fingers.

"Why do women want dresses they cannot undo without a maid?" he asked idly as she came over to the bed. He finished the task quickly, trying to ignore the soft fabric of her chemise as he undid each button and untied the laces, warm from their close contact with her body.

"I do not know - maybe so they can secretly badger their escorts into service." She turned to look at him with serious eyes. "I wish you would dance with me in the ballroom."

"Leave it alone, Ella. You have the alliances you wanted. And in the spring when we reach England you will stay there with your family, I will go on, and that will be the end of it. It hardly matters whether I dance with you."

"So you will leave after England?" she stepped away, a strange twist to her mouth.

"Of course I will leave – and you will finally be home again. Just like you wanted – unless you prefer to stay here with one of your counts or officers." He waited, steeled, for her reply.

"Erik," Her eyes dark with a strange sort of urgency in the dim firelight, she stepped so close to him that in another step she would have been in his arms. "That is not what_ I_ want."

Her lips were pink, parted ever so slightly, and he had the sudden mad realization that he would kiss her, must kiss her, as he had so disastrously a lifetime ago in the Persian court.

Her mouth was whisper soft, as he remembered, and like before she froze.

When she leaned in to return the kiss the sensation seemed to explode, a wild, beautiful crescendo that rushed in his ears. Her mouth was beautifully warm, sweet as he brushed his lips over hers and felt the sensation dance on the surface of his skin.

"Is that what _you_ want?" Her voice caught on the words.

"No," he said firmly, the words coming with a delirious rush, "That is not what I want, either."

He felt her smile against his mouth, laugh, then suddenly he was kissing her as if he could drown, as if he had been drowning forever and had suddenly found land.

Before he could think, his hands were running across the smooth skin of her neck, through the curls of her hair. Her mouth was on his, her fingertips moving across his arms, and with a recklessness so fevered it felt like the first rush of morphine he wrapped his hands around her waist, running them up the boned lines of her bodice until his fingers felt the smooth skin of her back, then pulling blindly, recklessly at the remaining laces. She was still smiling, giggling at the rush, pushing his coat down over his shoulders until he stripped it off impatiently. She placed her hands on his chest above his heart, her warm palms skating muscle and bone and suddenly he was shivering in the warm room as his shirt lay discarded behind them, and her dress and chemise fell from her body in languid folds, alternately concealing and revealing the smooth lines of her body.

With a curse he tore at the remaining buttons, slipping the gown off her shoulders to claim the skin underneath. It was like he had imagined, and better – the intoxicating curve of her breasts and hips in his hands, the electric warmth of her hands possessively running over his back, arms, and chest. The tension seemed to hum through his body, and she met it with an answering urgency as he pressed her closer to him, hip meeting hip, legs entwining as they stumbled back onto the bed.

In a moment the rest of their clothes were gone, and she moaned – a pretty, mewling sound of need as they pressed together that nearly undid him. Her eyes were wide, her hair falling in ravished curls about her face, and when she paused – naked, warm, shimmering in the firelight – she smiled and placed a trail of kisses below the mask across his mouth and jaw, working diligently down his throat to his chest. He claimed her mouth again, and felt her long legs wrap around him in answer. They joined quickly, hotly in the night. Erik gasped as he entered her, and laughed as he heard her answer with a moan as they began to rock together. Heated, needful, and unpracticed – this awkward, wonderful build as he breathed her name like a prayer, and she held him to her at the end as if they could meld together.

Afterwards he remembered to think, the haze parting with each staccato beat of his heart pounding in his ears. He lay motionless beneath the hand she rested on his chest, beneath the hot black mask clinging to his sweat-slicked face - afraid to move, afraid to breathe as he listened to their panting breaths in the dark room and waited for her reaction.

"Say you will never leave without taking me with you," she finally whispered into the silence, her face pressed against his chest. Her hair caught against the edge of the mask, sliding it down on his face. He caught it quickly with his hand, holding it in place.

"Never, Ella…never."

She sighed happily, moving closer until her arms were wrapped around him, the smooth length of her warm against his side. He twined his fingers in hers in wonder, and felt the hard band of gold on her left hand.

"Ella, where did the ruby come from?"

She blushed in the darkened room. "Oh - Aara gave it to me when we left Persia. Anya said a married woman should wear a ring…so I put it on."

_An accident, a rescue - a wife, _a voice echoed insidiously in the back of his mind. He pushed it back roughly, burying it beneath the memories of the night.

"I - I will buy you a new one."

He lay awake long after she had fallen asleep, listening to her low, even breaths as the cool light of dawn began to slip in through the edges of the windows. The feeling was like morphine, stronger than opium - a surge of happiness that warmed the room with its beauty.

_I did not know it could be like this. That this is how other people live. How other people _love_. _

**A/N: Thoughts? I'd love to hear your reactions. **


	19. Unexpected

**A/N: Summer was a bad time for writing, but I'm finally back with a new chapter. Thanks for hanging in there – I apologize for the wait. : )**

The sun was bright in a frozen room when Ella woke the next morning, blinking in the light streaming through the windows. Erik stirred briefly, burying his face further into his arm and pillow, hair falling across his forehead over the dark mask. A position she had seen many times – this old habit of sleeping half on his side – made new and sensual by the bare lines of skin and muscle.

_You care for him,_ Anya had said. And he had come to her, looked at her with his great golden eyes, and answered a question she had not needed to ask. When he left her later that night next to the newly made fire, she had walked to her dresser and found the ring. It was heavy and smooth in her hand like the day Aara had given it to her, hoping she could purchase a new life.

_We _are_ married, Anya, after all…because yes, I like him. I… I love him_ _– and I think he feels the same._ _Dear God, please let him feel the same. _

She thought of the clothes strewn across the floor with curious thrill of embarrassed triumph, and sat up in bed to survey the aftermath. The cold pricked across her bare skin, and she pulled the covers around her body with a shiver.

"Are you leaving?" came the whispered question, and she turned to see Erik, his eyes fixed on her in the hushed room.

"No. It's cold," she observed, and moved closer to him under the covers. The warmth crept over her instantly, followed by the hot, smooth sensation of his body against. In the dreamy rush of the night before, she had only noticed the warmth and the hard lines of muscle and bone as they pressed against her. Now she felt the ridges and valleys of scars, gashes and gouges appearing periodically across his torso and culminating in the wide gash he had gained in the Sultana's ring. She tried to remember if she had seen them when she stitched the wound, but could only remember the blood and the black of the thread. He shifted, and she realized he was uncomfortable with the marks, unwilling to have them bared to her fingers. She moved her hand to the center of his chest, feeling the slow, even jump of his heart against her palm.

The warm want made her feel reckless and giddy, as if the entire world had shrunk – had expanded – to only this bright morning, this beautiful room. After a moment he smiled, and then his mouth was on hers, hesitantly at first, then more confidently, and then she could barely think at all as she ran her hands over his shoulders and felt him begin to move against her.

"I am glad the housekeeper left," she whispered against his neck amid feather-light kisses.

"I wish she had left weeks before," he murmured into her hair. "Months…years…" he continued extravagantly, until she laughed and captured his mouth with her own.

_They described everything in the harem – everything but this feeling, everything but love. I would not have believed them if they had._

He left hours after his usual time, and Ella spent the rest of the day in the parlor calmly sipping tea and listening to Anya talk about the next ball. And thinking about how quickly, and how wonderfully, everything could be different – all over again.

When Countess Lyeta Lukhova, with her beautiful auburn hair, approached Anya during the final ball of the week Ella barely noticed her. Out of the corner of her eye, she was watching Erik. He had kept up his familiar, long-suffering post by the patio doors, and was trying for once to act interested in something one of the Princes was saying. When his eyes met hers she followed the slight shrug of his shoulders, and had to hurry to suppress a smile. Anya's sudden and discreet elbow in her ribs brought her back to the conversation with a painful jab, and Ella turned to the Countess apologetically.

"I beg your pardon – I was distracted. I have not seen Count Isayev tonight, Countess," she replied with a friendly smile. Lukhova's mouth inexplicably thinned beneath narrowed eyes, and Ella paused, unsure of what response she had been seeking. "If I see him, I will certainly let him know you have need of him," she added helpfully.

Lukhova's mouth twisted further, and she walked away without a word. Anya frowned, whispering behind her fan, "That was _odd_, Ella - what do you suppose is wrong with her? I wonder why she would be asking about Isayev…"

Ella waited while Anya speculated a while longer, before making her excuses at the first opportunity. She found Erik alone on the deserted patio.

"Time to leave?" he asked immediately, his eyes bright with anticipation. Ella felt a shiver of excitement run through her body as he took her arm in his.

"Yes."

Erik hoped Ella would not be disappointed in not picking out the ring. He had no idea what she might expect – or what country's tradition he should follow. He _did_ know that bringing her to the St. Petersburg shops would be an exercise in humiliation.

The merchants of St. Petersburg distrusted the mask, and had from the start. Opening accounts for Ella's new wardrobe had set the tone for the town. The women's fear had been palpable and ugly until greed overwhelmed their principles. _You don't belong out here – where we have to see you, acknowledge that something like you exists. _Somehow the mask never hid the truth – it was always there, instantly recognizable.

And trying to purchase a ring with that truth leering out of the blank eyes of the mask proved to be nearly impossible.

"You need to _leave_," the first jeweler hissed furiously, appearing in front of him within minutes of entering the store. The other customers were staring with an open-mouthed gape, as if a highwayman had appeared among them. "We don't deal with your kind here."

"I am looking to purchase a ring," Erik answered coolly. Running too soon would only signal fear; a retreat could turn to an ambush within moments. The eyes burned into his back as they always did, but he had learned to master the urge to flee. He stood his ground and looked levelly at the shopkeep and the small crowd of onlookers. No one even pretended to look away.

"What is it?" he heard a woman murmur to her escort, who replied in a stage whisper. "Some freak in a mask – we'll make him leave. Take off the mask if you are going to stay," the man demanded loudly, and the small crowd picked up the cry, murmuring in agreement.

"You heard what he said," another man growled, stepping forward with clenched fists. "Take it off if you don't have anything to hide."

_Fool, if I meant to kill you would be dead already. _Anger surged in his veins, clouding his eyes, but he controlled it. A stiff nod of his head, and he turned on his heel.

"…a criminal or diseased do you suppose?" he heard a woman whisper as he walked away. "It could be a deformity," another replied. "Either way, he should be dead. It would be better for everyone."

One, two, three, four steps out of the door, then past the window of the shop, all the time listening to hear if they were coming after him. It would not have been the first time.

"Get out the hell out," were the first and last words out of the next shopkeeper. A shaky hand and a firearm backed up the threat in the empty store. Erik never looked at the pistol, keeping his eyes glued on the man's twitching face.

_What have you done, you fool? How can you hope to keep a wife when you can not even buy a ring?_

After a few more false starts, he slipped into a small jewelry store located down a side street. The jeweler wasted no time, like the others.

"The police are just around the corner."

Erik dropped a purse of money on the counter with a scowl. "I will remember that in case you try to rob me. I need to buy a ring."

The man eyed the purse, and Erik knew the piece would not come cheaply. "What is with the mask?"

"Fire," he said, and dropped his eyes in a show of shamed sadness. The lie burned in his mouth – this pathetic attempt to supplicate this stupid stranger, to subject to his condescending disdain.

"You must have burnt it up pretty bad to need to cover it up completely," The man's tone had changed now – still suspicious, but curious as well. _Not a highwayman, only a freak,_ Erik thought bitterly. He saw his opening, and bluffed.

"I need a gold ring for a lady – do you have one or should I go elsewhere?"

The jeweler licked his lips, and darted his eyes back and forth from the mask to the money. "I have several - for the right price."

The ring was heavy and golden, engraved with a trailing floral pattern in the simple, burnished metal.

It was worth the small fortune the wide band commanded, even worth putting up with the jeweler's sharp-eyed speculation, condescending manner, and pessimistic predictions.

"Bring it back if she don't like it," the jeweler added at the end of the sale, in a tone Erik assumed was meant to be helpful. "Wouldn't be the first piece we've exchanged."

Erik did not notice the city as he walked home. The streets were brightly lit, relatively safe in this cosseted little neighborhood – and he was thinking about the stores, and about the night to come, the ring, and Ella. He barely looked at the man coming down the sidewalk from the opposite side. Erik replayed that moment later in the night with one word:

_Stupid, stupid, stupid._

_Russia has made you soft,_ he thought detachedly as he felt the first fist pummel into his stomach. It stole the air from his lungs, and he fought to keep from vomiting onto the snowy street. _You should have seen this coming._

The man attached to the fist was jeering, beady eyes glittering in the darkness. "Count Lukhov doesn't take kindly to dogs like you insulting his wife," he drawled out, and Erik gulped fiery breaths of the cold air, willing his lungs to work again. "Especially you, all covered up like some carnival act. Too ugly to take the bag off your head? Thought we'd come down and tell you, seeing as you ain't from around here…"

Two more men emerged – _excellent, a fucking party _– and the smell of alcohol hung in the air. Erik saw the wooden rod carried by the last man just as it sliced through the air towards him. A hard blow to the temple sent his knees buckling beneath him, and stole away every coherent through except one:

_Fight._

"What're you hiding, anyways, freak?" the man asked, and Erik felt pain explode across his back. " I think we all want to see – whatever it is, it's gonna be _pretty_ compared to your face tomorrow..."

The man bent down, and Erik saw his chance. He caught him under the chin in a headbut as the man reached for him, and heard a surprised grunt of pain as a shower of blood erupted from the man's mouth. The second and third men lunged, and Erik managed to land a good punch as a hail of fists descended on his head and torso. A quick fumbling and his dagger was in his hand. He sliced it across the thick neck and jaw of one of the thugs before burying it into the shoulder of the other. He turned to find the first man as the second began to lunge again, then heard the shots.

The men scattered, vaporizing in the dark street. Within moments the only sign of their struggle was the trampled snow beneath him, splattered with dark smears of blood.

The man with the gun emerged slowly, walking towards him. The fool was so confident he did not even bother to hold out the pistol, letting it drop to his side instead. Erik lunged the moment he was within striking distance.

"Hold up – hold up!" the newcomer yelped, jumping away with his hands held in front of him. "I'm here to help – I'm Captain Ruskikh."

Erik paused, feeling a wave of dizziness pass over him as his sight wavered, then steadied. The name meant nothing to him. The man seemed to realize his mistake, and hurried to explain.

"I am a – friend – of Princess Anya's. I – rather, Anya and I – are in your wife's debt. I have been looking for you all afternoon – you are a hard man to track."

_Obviously not hard enough. _Erik felt his head gingerly. His hand came away wet with blood. _Merde, merde, merde... _ The street swam again as he forced himself to look for his hat, now trampled in the snow. It was only a few more blocks home…

"Wait up, man – where are you going?" the Ruskikh exclaimed as he began to walk away.

"I am going home."

The fool smiled, as if it was an invitation. "I'll walk with you – it's Peter, by the way – Peter Ruskikh."

He was still there when they neared the townhouse, and Erik fingered the dagger in his coat pocket as he walked up the path with the man on his heels.

_If he is lying, he will pay for it dearly. _

Ella met him at the door, opening it with a smile.

"You are late…" she began kindly, framed by the warm light of the foyer, and he watched as the smile froze on her face. "Dear God, what happened?"

"It's just a cut... I have brought a friend of yours," he replied curtly, as the fool behind him stumbled in through the door.

"Captain Ruskikh?"

Ruskikh doffed his hat immediately. "I apologize, Madam. I had hoped to see you under better circumstances."

A frenetic pounding reverberated through the house from the back door, and Ruskikh's face darkened. "Wait here."

The man ran to the back door – complicating any hope of surprise or retreat – and Erik quickly pulled a small pistol out of the parlor table as the pounding ceased. Moments later a hailstorm of fists rained against the front door.

"Ella," a woman's voice called out. "Ella, it's me."

"Anya," Ella explained quickly, opening the door. A snowy bundle of brown velvet and fur stumbled into the room, already midsentence.

"-warn you, because he hired a gang after she insisted that…oh." Erik saw Anya's eyes rivet on his bloodied temple, then travel down the length of the mask and the torn coat before turning back to Ella. "I am too late," she finished apologetically. She looked up as Peter walked into the room. "There was a fight, then."

"Nonsense," Ruskikh replied in a confident tone. "Just a bit of a scuffle." Erik noted that the man's eye was rapidly blackening into a pronounced bruise. _Had there been others? _

"What has happened?!" Ella demanded in frustration, her voice rising around the edges.

"Count Lukhov sent a small group of thugs to jump your husband."

_Ta gueule_, Erik glared at Ruskikh as he racked his brain. And w_ho the hell is Lukhov? Why would he want to... _the answer came slowly through the fog of pain as bits and pieces of the men's words came back to him. _Of course. The auburn woman._

"Why would they attack you?" Ella was asking him, clearly confused. _She is not going to understand this…_

"I suggested that his wife was…involved…with Count Isayev."

The horror that washed across her face confirmed his suspicions. "You are lucky Lukhov did not call you out! Why would you _do_ that?"

"She said you were demimonde," Erik replied under his breath, and Ruskikh broke in to continue the story.

"Luckily, the Count is no fonder of his wife than you are," he interjected cheerfully. "She _is_ involved with someone– just not Isayev. If Lukhov had wanted you dead he would have arranged it – but I doubt they were paid to do much more than they did."

Erik saw Ella look at Ruskikh sharply – his reassurance was evidently no comfort to her – before returning her gaze to his temple.

"Princess, Captain, thank you so much for your help. We are truly in your debt," she said in a thin voice, her eyes darting back and forth between him, and Anya and Ruskikh.

"I should return home, before they miss me," Anya picked up on Ella's hint reluctantly. "My carriage is outside – I told the driver that I had promised to bring you a book. I will call on you tomorrow, Ella. Monsieur Erik, I hope you recover quickly. Peter – Captain. Take care, please."

Ruskikh bowed to Ella, kissing her hand gallantly. "No, I remain in your debt, madame." He turned back to Anya, lingering over the girl's hand as he kissed it. Ella locked the doors behind them as Anya left from the front door, and Ruskikh slipped out the back. She came back to the parlor and looked at his temple with a still face and white, clenched hands.

"Sit down, Erik. You are – bleeding rather badly."

He shrugged off his overcoat and jacket, and sat down heavily at the kitchen table as his head throbbed with each heartbeat. Ella insisted on cleaning the wound herself, her fingers working gingerly around the gash and swelling to wash the slick mess of blood out of his hair. He noticed she applied the stitches without instruction this time.

Without the opium it hurt like hell.

"For your head and your back," Ella explained after she was done, handing him a towel full of ice. She stared at her fingers, picking at an invisible spot on the corner of a freshly scrubbed fingernail.

"Does your head hurt very badly? Can you come to bed?"

_It is not_, he thought, _how I imaged hearing those words tonight_.


	20. Messages

Erik woke in the middle of the night to a blinding flash of pain. The curses of the villagers were still ringing in his ears as he squinted into the darkness, each breath spiking a new protest from battered ribs while the room swam into focus. _French, this time. An old nightmare..._

_Idiot. You should have stayed awake longer after a head wound._

Ella stirred next to him, and he gingerly eased out of the eiderdown bed. The mask pulled against his skin, and he ran his fingers beneath the straps before carefully untying them. The patch of black in his hands stared up at him through unseeing eyes, the empty gaze mocking in the darkness_. _Running his hand over his face, Erik traced his fingers down his profile - starting at the smooth line of forehead and twisting along the familiar scars and contortions. Even by touch, the planes and voids could never be mistaken for a normal visage.

Fresh air breathed against pressure points, a cool balm against hot, sore skin. He walked quietly down the paneled hall to the study, and lit a candle on the desk. He found what he was looking for by touch – in the back of the right bottom drawer, layered beneath papers and books until it was almost forgotten. The mirror was very small – no larger than his palm. And carefully, very carefully to only see a few inches at a time, he looked over the extent of the damage.

The red spots were chronic, though they had grown from masked nights spent with Ella. The other injuries were new. The thin skin had torn in places, and a welt he had suspected and iced had grown large across his left cheekbone – a wild punch that found its way home before he could deflect it with the knife.

Erik cursed quietly into the dark. The location would rub badly, taking a long time to heal.

And the real damage was still unknown.

Ella had been quiet after Anya and Ruskikh left, pale and still like the harem girl he first met. She did not mention the Countess' slur again, or even challenge him on the rash retort that had started this. She merely locked up the house, carefully securing as many doors as she could between their room, the kitchen, and the foyer.

Erik had watched her put the skeleton key protectively on the mantle and bit his tongue.

_A child could pick the locks, Ella, and a man could kick down any and all of those doors. _

An unwanted memory had bubbled to the surface, but he had refused to think of it. He had temporarily won the struggle, willing himself to sleep as soon as he could, only to be awakened hours later by the old nightmares. The memory took full hold now, blooming and diffusing through the darkened room like a poison. _You remember the look she had on her face, don't you, Erik? A woman afraid of a mob? You should… _

"Erik, are you alright?" Ella's voice startled him out of his thoughts, and he gratefully replaced the mask to face her. The silk settled back against open wounds with a stinging bite, and he turned to see her framed in the doorway, her long white night gown glowing from the dim light of the candle. Her eyes were dark and frustrated – unhappy. _She thought Russia was perfect, safe. You have brought this ugliness into her _home_. _

"Completely," Erik answered the question solidly, carefully careless. _I have to fix this. _

"Come back to bed?"

"Yes - soon."

Ella did not leave, instead tucking her hands into her wide white sleeves and walking into the room. "Lyeta is a _cheinne,_" she declared flatly, a borrowed burst of profanity that made him want to smile for the first time that evening.

_I will fix this, Ella – you do not have to worry. _"What do you know about her?"

"Nothing, really, except a few of her friends. And she has a lover, whoever he is." Ella ran her eyes over his temple critically. "I think that cut is looking worse – you should ice it again. You are planning to go to work tomorrow, despite it?"

"Yes."

She sighed, puffing out her cheeks. "I have been thinking – I think we should go out as soon as possible. There are a few balls coming soon that should do – and I think Anna could get us invitations. I had not intended to ask her, but…" She trailed off, but her chin lifted stubbornly. "I want to send the Countess a message."

"Don't worry about the Countess, Ella. They will not bother us again," _My message will not be delivered in some ballroom. _Erik frowned, remembering Anya and Ruskikh. _"_What is Anya doing with Ruskikh? I thought you said she was engaged."

"She is…but she has one too many fiancés." Ella sighed. "Poor thing – Mikhail refuses to release her."

"That is her problem, Ella – not yours."

"They are in love, Erik. All I have done is keep the secret, and chaperone for a few minutes every now and then. They have no _right_ to make her marry Mikhail against her will – this is supposed to be a civilized country."

"By law, her father has _every_ right to shut her in her room until she dies if he chooses. The same as the serfs that work on his farms. The Prince seems like a reasonable man, so he might forgive her eventually if she gives up her lover. But he will not forgive _you_. I can deal with Ludhov – but it will be damned hard to sneak out of Russia if the Prince is chasing us."

"What did you mean, 'deal with?" Ella changed the topic abruptly, her eyes cautious. "What are you planning to do?"

"I am sending him a message."

Lukhov's thugs took nearly three weeks to hunt down, a deliciously familiar game of cat and mouse. Erik started at the docks, collecting as much information as money would buy. The dockworkers were not chatty, but they responded well to coin and respected the long knife he wore at his waist. And the men in question were well known – Ludhov had not gone far to find his mercenaries.

The first Erik identified by the cut in his neck, slumped in the corner of one of the dingy taverns. He was an easy mark without his friends, traipsing predictably out into a darkened alley after a few drinks and collapsing silently with a blow to the head. The greatest difficulty was moving him – a feat Erik found took all of his strength. Deep in his cups already, the head blow left the man over two hundred pounds of dead weight to be dragged into and out of the rented cart. Erik deposited him, still passed out cold, on the doorstep of Ludhov's estate just before dawn. He met Ella coming down the stair from their bedroom just as the sun was rising. She accepted his story of insomnia suspiciously, but did not question it.

The second required a little more finesse – and a fast piece of knife work. Erik found him by the shipping yards at noon, loading wagons for delivery in the city. He stalked him carefully, concealing himself behind boxes and crates until he found the right moment. When the whistle blew, the man lagged behind his coworkers, and the few seconds were enough to seal his fate. The man had been faster than his friend, and had put up a fight that landed them both in a puddle of ice before the lasso did its work. Erik left the man woozy and gagged, sitting in a puddle of blood in the barn next to the Count's favorite mount. Later that night, he told a skeptical Ella he had slipped on a patch of ice.

The third, though, was the best – smaller than the others, and mean. Erik had tracked him across town, and found him pestering a prostitute outside of a brothel. The dingy street emptied obligingly as he walked up to the man, and landed a left cross on the side of his head without a word. The prostitute faded away into the night within moments, and Erik took the opportunity to take the man down blow by blow with his fists. This one, Erik decided as he wiped the sweat from his forehead and replaced his hat, would be the final message. This was the finale – and in an ironic coincidence, he knew just the stage for it.

Ella had not wanted to attend this particular ball, Countess or no Countess, but it suited Erik's purposes perfectly. Hosted by a military friend of Mikhail's, Anya had begged Ella to come until Ella felt there was no way to refuse. Ella dressed nervously that night, arranging her hair for what seemed like hours while Erik waited downstairs with growing impatience.

"I suppose I am ready now," she announced at last, walking reluctantly down the stairs in a sweep of silks. The burgundy gown glowed softly against her skin, picking up the pink of her complexion and giving her hair rich highlights of antique gold. The Sultana's diamonds sparkled at her ears and throat, but her eyes were shaded and worried. "I wish we could make some excuse – I do not think tonight will help Anya at all. She seems so wild these last few days, but she promises nothing is amiss. I feel like I can't leave her alone…especially not after all she has done."

Ella, Anya, and Mary had been inseparable over the past weeks, arm in arm through balls and drawing rooms in a strange show of solidarity that Erik supposed passed as warfare for Russia's ladies. Ella had been impossible to miss during the last few balls, standing vulnerable and unyielding at the center of the ballroom with her friends while the gossips hissed and fluttered in the corners. Tonight, however, it was Anya who was under attack as Ella and Mary attempted periodic rescues. Mikhail was in high form, bolstered by his friends, vodka, and the massive quantities of imported champagne that filled the rooms. Claiming Anya early in the evening and flanked by her mother and sister, he dragged his reluctant fiancé behind him from guest to guest.

Anya's helpless fury and Mikhail's cool show of force seemed to unnerve the party, set further on edge by the drunkenness of Mikhail's officers. The courtiers seemed jumpy, brittle in the cold air, and Erik noted smugly that the Countess Ludhovna was continually out of step, starting violently whenever her partners came to claim her for their dances.

"The Countess does not look well," Ruskikh observed softly, walking up to Erik on the deserted patio a few hours into the party. "I have heard they are having some, ah, trouble with trespassers."

Erik shot a glance at the captain, who returned the look with a smirk. _Interesting, that Anya's captain should be here tonight. _"Do you know if our host is having trouble with trespassers?" he asked bluntly. In the ballroom, Mikhail was introducing a scowling Anya to an old man decorated with medals.

Ruskikh grinned, as if they shared some private joke. "I was invited with the rest of the regiment officers."

"Remember to leave with them."

The fool laughed, and gave him a short military bow as the music changed. "Au revoir, friend – this is my cue. I have promised a lady a dance."

With a wink he walked confidently into the ballroom, and up to Anya and her mother. Anya greeted Ruskikh with cool formality, as if they had never met, before gathering her skirts in one hand and placing the other in his. When they began to dance, they stood at arms' length – just a hair more than propriety required.

Erik found Ella by the ices. "Ruskikh is here."

"I know. I have been afraid Anya will do something foolish, but we can go home soon," she confided, her voice tired. "They will be having fireworks, and after that Anya has convinced her mother to let her leave."

"Where is she now?"

"I don't know – I lost sight of her and Peter after their dance… oh, good. Here are the fireworks now."

The party moved to the wide windows in the hall, spilling over into the cold stone patios as a rainbow of lights burst above the estate. Secluded in a darkened corner, Erik felt Ella lean back lightly, the curve of her shoulders pressing into his chest. Her hair and skin were scented lightly with some soft, floral scent, and he imagined taking the dress off later that night, lace by lace, and watching the shell pink of her skin reveled an inch at a time…

"Ella! I have been looking for you!" Anya's voice cut softly through this pretty daydream, as she squeezed into the corner beside them. Her cheeks were flushed prettily, and she was smiling for the first time that night. "I have such wonderful news," she whispered lowly, just for Ella's ears, then continued loudly, "I am looking for my mother– have you seen her?"

Ella shook her head no, and Erik saw Ruskikh standing nonchalantly against a wall, several windows away. Mikhail was pushing through the crowd, his face pulled into an ugly scowl. Erik saw him pause when he saw Ruskikh, turning towards him. As Ruskikh melted reluctantly into the crowd, Anya stepped fiercely before Mikhail, pulling Ella with her.

"Where have you been," Mikhail demanded without preamble. He did not bother to wait for a response, taking Anya by the arm in a fluid movement that belied the way his fingers sank into her skin. As he left Erik noticed his eyes lingered dangerously on Ella.

"We can leave now," Ella whispered softly, her eyes lingering on Anya's retreating form as she turned towards the front of the house.

On the way out Erik was pleased to see that they were just behind the Count and Countess Lukhov. Both ignored them resolutely, hurrying to their carriage as the coachman opened the door. When the countess climbed in there was a shrill shriek, followed by the count and coachman hurrying in after her. A few long seconds of muffled conversation went by, then the coachman climbed out, white-faced, and took his place near the driver. The carriage rolled out of the drive without another sound.

"Erik?" Ella asked suspiciously when they were safely inside their own home, "What was wrong with the Lukhovs' carriage?"

"I would imagine they had an unexpected guest." Erik moved impulsively to kiss the nape of her neck, where small curls had escaped from her updo.

She shuddered prettily, twining her fingers in the silk of his cravat, but refused to be diverted. "How would you know that?"

"Just a guess, my love."

**A/N: Reviews always appreciated. Thanks for hanging in there through some long gaps between chapters! : )**


	21. The English Embankment

**Thanks for the kind words & the new follows! Happy holidays, everyone!**

Ella received a note from Anya the next morning, hastily scrawled on the back of a calling card:

"Meet me at the Admiralty on the English Embankment at 3 o'clock – Maman has agreed to walk along the promenade. We have sent a carriage for you. "

A quick glance through the window revealed one of the Prince's carriages and drivers, waiting patiently in the snow.

The carriage glided eastward through the icy slush of the streets towards the Neva river. To Ella's surprise, the snow began to clear as they neared their destination, transitioning into wet mud before revealing bare ground and a dry, granite walkway studded with the liveried carriages of the Russian court. On dismounting, she saw that the street was lined with members of the aristocracy - mingling in their finest coats up and down the length of the shore, here and there pooling in small clusters of conversation. The imposing facades of the foreign embassies and palatial townhouses dotted the street, seeming to glow golden in the sunlight reflected off the river.

Ella found Anya, her mother and sisters deep in conversation with their cousins. Anya broke away immediately as she approached, linking arms and lingering until they had fallen several feet behind the others. Ella saw the Princess Fedorovna frown slightly at Anya, but she said nothing as they continued along the pathway uninterrupted.

"What is the event?" Ella whispered curiously, nodding towards the crowded streets around them.

"Here? There is no event," Anya replied, then caught herself. "I forgot – you came so late in the year, you wouldn't know… The entire court comes here to see and be seen every year, from now until after Easter when it moves to the Summer Garden. The snow melts at the English Embankment weeks before the Nevsky Prospekt promenades are clear."

"Why do they call it the English Embankment?"

"Didn't Mary ever mention it? This is where the English Embassy is, and the street was named for the merchants who lived here over the past century. Of course, it is more refined now, but you will still find a few shops here and there… " Anya trailed off distractedly, glancing ahead at her sisters as she slowed her steps even further.

"Peter and I are leaving St. Petersburg," she whispered. "Another month or so, and no more. I wanted to tell you, in case there is not time to say goodbye when we leave."

Ella had expected the news, but still felt her stomach turn queasily on hearing the plan. _Mikhail does not seem like the type to forgive and forget – and this elopement would be the talk of the town. _"Where will you go?"

"East, as far as we can. Last night was the last straw – Peter is convinced."

"What happened? All was well when I saw you – and I thought you were leaving right after the fireworks."

"Peter and I – after the dance, we snuck away for a few moments to one of the observatories."

"Alone? Anya, someone could have seen you. You will be ruined if you are not more careful!"

"I don't care!" Anya retorted fiercely. "And it doesn't matter now - someone did see us, and told Mikhail. When Mikhail found me I was back at the ices. He started yelling, saying I was making a fool of him. When Peter heard, he confronted Mikhail."

Ella closed her eyes briefly, seeing the scene as it unfolded in the crowded ballroom. Mikhail had been in no condition to be discreet – and Peter would have come quickly when he heard the commotion. He had been over-confident and furious by turns that night, watching the woman he had won paraded around by the fiancé she hated.

"They almost came to blows," Anya whispered, "and if Mama had not arrived when she did there would have been a dual. I am forbidden to see Peter, now – and we are to leave tomorrow to visit our great-aunt in Moscow as punishment. I don't know how long we will have to stay. We are only here today because Mama said that it would look like a scandal to leave immediately. Thank goodness you had already left, or I would not be able to see you, either. " Ella felt a small piece of folded paper pressed into her hand. "Please give this to Peter."

"But this is madness– you would do so much better to try to convince your parents to let you give up Mikhail, first, rather than running away with Peter like a thief in the night."

"Ella, please – one last time. I must give this to him."

"What will they do to him if they catch you? Have you thought of this?"

"Don't scold me. I already have thought of it - of everything! Please – say you will give it to him."

Ella reluctantly tucked the paper into her pocket. "I will try, but I cannot promise it."

"You will, though – I know. " Anya smiled happily, then gave her a sideways look of concern. Ella knew the subject had changed as she heard the note of sympathy creep into Anya's voice. "How are you? You did not seem well last night."

"I am fine – just not feeling well."

"Have you told him yet?"

Ella shook her head slowly. If Erik had noticed her sudden malaise, he had not mentioned it. Anya and Mary, in contrast, had enthusiastically interrogated her after she turned down the first cup of tea. "No."

"Why not?"

"I want to be sure." She felt the familiar, fluttering pain in her abdomen, and with it the familiar battle of fear and excitement.

Anya gave her a skeptical look. "How much more sure can you be? You should tell him – men are always pleased enough with the news."

"I will tell him in a few more weeks – when I know more."

The Princess finally approached, effectively cutting off any future conversation. A few polite exchanges and farewells, and Ella found herself alone on the promenade, waving as the Federovnas' departed in their carriage.

Glancing at the boulevard, Ella was not surprised to see Peter materialize from a tobacco shop across the street. After a long look, he entered a small bookshop which optimistically advertised English and Russian periodicals. She lingered, browsing through the window of a jewelry shop before following him into the store.

Inside the door, she looked quickly over the wares and picked up a small book of poetry.

"Good day, Madame," she heard Peter say off her shoulder. Dressed in his military uniform, he cut an unlikely figure in the cramped, bookish space. Ella slipped Anya's note into the book in her hand. "Good day, Captain. I was just admiring this book – have you read Shelley?"

"No, I have not. But I will, on your recommendation," Peter took the book from her with a polite bow, adding in a whisper, "_Thank you_."

Ella continued to browse as Peter bought the book and departed. The shopkeeper smiled as she leafed through another book of poems, wandering over to address her in accented Russian. "May I help you, Madame?"

Ella smiled at the familiar infliction to his words, the rolling sounds of a London accent. She answered in English. "No, thank you – I am browsing."

"Ah, you speak English, Madame?"

"I am from England," she said conversationally, flipping through the titles stacked on a table by the door. "When did you move –"

"Where else are you from?" the shopkeep demanded abruptly.

Ella had looked up with a smile before noticing the shopkeep's expression – a combination of anxiety and eagerness, he was staring at her intensely. _As one would look at a bug pinned on a board..._

"Nowhere else," she lied, a small shiver running across the back of her neck under the man's close look. She put down the book, and turned towards the door. "I don't see what I am looking for – thank you for your help."

The man followed her, smiling as she edged towards the door. He held out his hands, palms up, with a look of apology. "I beg your pardon, ma'am – I did not recognize your accent, was all. I have been out of the country too long. Can I interest you in one of our periodicals? We have all the latest from London."

"No, thank you," Ella replied, a hand on the doorknob. "Perhaps another time."

The shopkeep nodded, still smiling too carefully. "Have a good day, Madame."

Ella walked outside, try to shrug off the feeling of eyes upon her. As she walked towards the carriage she suddenly felt a cold feeling wash over her. _Someone is following me. _The footsteps sounded brusquely behind her, a metallic ricochet of steel boot taps bouncing up off the pavement, keeping pace. She walked faster, noting the carriage up ahead and the familiar footman, and scanned the crowd. No acquaintances, but a busy street – surely she was paranoid, and it was only a coincidence. A deep voice sounded over her left ear, and immediately chilled her to the bone on the mild walk.

"Bonjour, Madame," Mikhail said smoothly, the unexpectedly pleasant smile on his face bringing her to a momentary halt. "Fine day for an afternoon walk, isn't it?"

"Bonjour. Yes, it is – but I am going home now."

"So soon? But you should take time to enjoy the shops. I know my sisters always do this time of year – you can hardly drag them out of the milliner's. I am glad to have found you – I wonder if you could assist me? I thought I would bring Anya a present – smooth over a lover's spat. I'm sure you have heard about our little misunderstanding," his voice was hard beneath the light tone, and Ella felt a tremor run through her fingertips.

"I am sure you would be better talking to the Princess directly – I know nothing of a lover's spat," Ella answered. _It is not quite a lie, _she thought disgustedly. _This is no _lover's_ spat, however Mikhail may choose to paint it. _

"No? Your discretion is appreciated, Madame," he said icily. "I'm sure this is why Anya finds you such a convenient friend."

"I think you mis-use the word discretion – it implies that I know something I do not share. Ah, here is my coach," Ella turned to face Mikhail with a painted smile. "I fear must bid you farewell."

"Are you sure I cannot escort you to the milliner's, Madame – there is a particularly fine one down the street."

"I have no need for a hat, and must reach home before the hour. My husband is expecting me," she added demurely, handing her bags to the footman and gathering her skirts to step into the carriage.

Mikhail took her arm firmly under the pretense of helping her into the carriage beneath the driver's disinterested gaze. "A good decision. Do take care, Madame. The roads can be treacherous this time of year for those unfamiliar with them."

A light touch of his hat and he moved away with a practiced smile, carefully solicitous for the benefit of the fashionable passer-by.

Ella savored the bite of the winter wind on her skin as she made her way home – it gave her time to think, calmed her stomach and cleared her head.

_Another month until the spring thaw reaches the countryside…and then the __распу́тица__, the spring mud, and more waiting until the water subsides and the roads are fit to travel. With luck, we could leave early…with luck._

_And then the months of travel through Europe… _

Erik had hated traveling through Russia, always watching the crowd as if it were a wild animal, ready to turn on them without warning. Ella bit her lip, remembering the peasant's slur. _Corpse_, he had jeered, picking a fight in the middle of a crowded street, drawing attention with his shouts about shows. There would be towns everywhere through Europe – towns and trains and ships with everyone crowded in on top of the other. Ella wished suddenly for the windswept steppes of Tartary, and the uncertain freedom of the empty grasslands and the fast gray mare. _At least there, the danger was not personal. _

The little chapel close to their home was a familiar haunt, and Ella ducked in with a whispered greeting to the caretaker. Tall candles flickered by the icons, illuminating their painted saints in a serene glow as they gazed out of golden frames. A sharp twinge of pain twisted deep in her abdomen, then subsided as she began the old prayers, the comforting cadence. _Our Father, who art in heaven… _

Ella looked back at the candles, watching distantly as the patient golden flames flickered and glowed in the dark. _Erik is right – we cannot stay. If Anya runs away…Mikhail already suspects her of having a lover. God only knows what he will tell the Prince, and we cannot risk another episode like Lukhov's. But how can we travel now –with so much at risk? _

_And what will I tell Erik? _


	22. Wonderful News

The Prince shared his own version of Anya's 'wonderful news' as they walked through the full layout of the blueprints. Erik listened impatiently, biting his tongue as Fedorovich requested the once-small country house be expanded to host a full wedding party.

"Do whatever needs to be done to double the occupancy," Fedorovich said firmly, as if it were as simple as adding on an extra room. "We'll need the place completed by next summer for Princess Anya's wedding. Are you still hell-bent on leaving in May?"

"My wife is eager to return to England," Erik replied coolly. "I will make the changes, and write the final documents for your contractors."

"I'll come to the point. I have shared some of the designs with friends – the style is getting attention. The Grand Duke has asked for a viewing. This is an unexpected boon, and a connection I intend to build on. I will extend your contract for the next sixteen months– stay and oversee the construction. I will make the terms more than generous."

For a moment, Erik's thoughts ran forward – _A_ _larger house, which could lead to another estate, a government building or an embassy… and be here when Anya jilts her fiancé, and the witch hunt begins. _He came back to reality with a ruthless snap. _Not a chance. _"Regardless, we are unable to stay past spring."

"Leave while this is still paper, and let someone else take credit?" The Prince gave him a smug, knowing look, and Erik felt a flash of annoyance take hold and begin to burn. "I would wager your wife would enjoy the summer season – Princess Anya is quite fond of her."

"We have an engagement. I'm sure your contractors will do the job admirably," Erik turned towards the table, and began rolling the plans up. _I will not be back to see if it they don't - it doesn't make a damn bit of difference to me. _

The Prince tapped the blueprints as if they were battle plans. "They will say they can, and the entire place will go up in flames some night like the Winter Palace in '37. It is hard to put a burned building in a portfolio. Stay through this summer and next. You could have your pick of projects once this is stone and mortar – here and whenever you decided to go to Europe. Your wife will wait – especially for this kind of opportunity. Who knows – they say the Tsar might build again."

The Prince departed with an invitation to dinner, which Erik refused as calmly as he could, and a few leading words about the size of the new contract.

Erik lost no time escaping the office, the Prince, and the blueprints. An hour's ride took him to the building site. The ground still glistened with snow among the white and black stripes of the birch trees, and Erik walked the icy grounds carefully, envisioning the foundations, timbering, and stonework building up from the meadow. _It will be a showpiece – if their masons can get the foundations right and keep the water out. _

At the unfinished Persian palace, Erik had eagerly watched the walls materialize each day, coming together like a dream turned to reality. The work had been addicting– the exhilarating process of realizing each plan in stone, line by line and calculation by calculation. The chance to build had outweighed the court, even held sway against the Sultana for many months. And the Prince was easy to work with – uninterested in details and remarkably open-minded on design.

_Lukhov is out of the way… the man is a coward at heart, and I can manage the rest of them. _

He thought of the Russian court, and of Ella – her precious connections and the tiny circle of friends she held so dear. He swore under his breath, and looked again at the empty, waiting site.

_If Ella had not let herself be wrapped up in Anya's plots…_

_It might have worked._

Ella was in the front parlor when he arrived home that night, lost in thought and absently thumbing through a new book by the fire. Erik lost no time sharing the Prince's news.

"Did you know Anya is marrying next spring?" he asked sarcastically, throwing his coat over a chair. "The Prince is requesting the house be _doubled_ to fit the occasion. He has offered me an extended contract - and the building of the Tsar's next palace."

"He is making a point. Mikhail caught Anya with Peter yesterday, and caused a scene. She is being sent to visit relatives in Moscow – and Mikhail is furious." Ella paused, worrying the cover of the book with her fingers before continuing slowly, "He stopped me on the street today."

"_What happened_?" Erik immediately scanned her face for any sign of injury. _I will kill him if he so much as laid a hand on her. The Sultana's prisoners will consider themselves lucky in comparison… _

"Nothing – I am fine. I went to the Neva River promenade, near the English Embassy, to see Anya today. He must have been following her – he stopped me after she left. He said he was buying a gift for Anya, and wanted my advice. What he wanted, though, was to know if I knew anything about Anya and Peter. I played dumb."

"What did Anya tell you?"

"She and Peter will run away in another month or so –as soon as they can after she returns from Moscow."

_It will be a close call, but with luck we could be on our way out of Russia by then. If she does not decide to elope early… _Erik cursed. "We will leave on schedule, but pack now. It the weather cooperates, we can go sooner. You still have not heard from your uncle?"

"The barrister has found him, but has no reply yet to my letters."

"No matter –we can write the lawyers before we go with instructions on where to forward the mail. We'll travel through France on our way to England – if we don't hear back from the lawyer, I can bid on work in Paris."

Ella did not comment on the lawyer, the journey, or Paris. She sat smoothing her thumb over the fingers of the opposite hand, and when she replied she spoke very softly, in English.

"I have been thinking – could we find a way to stay here? Erik – I am – we are – there is going to be a baby."

He stared at her, uncomprehending, as his mind slowly translated the words and their meaning.

"You - you must be wrong." _It's impossible –it has to be impossible._

"I do not think I am. You aren't happy?" Her face began to crumble like an unstable wall, stone upon stone plunging into ruin. In a flash he saw how it would distort completely when the baby came, her even features twisted with horror and disgust.

"Can you do something?" Erik heard the note of panic in his voice and tried to master it. Ella, he noted, made no such effort.

"_Do something_?"

"You do not want this child…" He felt the words catch and stumble as he tried to explain, as though his mouth had turned traitor and refused to form the sentences he so desperately needed. "You may think you do, but _you do not want this child_."

"Who doesn't want their own child?" Ella was staring at him, her eyes wary with misplaced alarm. _Ella, who never asked…_ He remembered her story about the tragic 'accident' – the convenient excuse she used to quiet the gossiping of the court. How she had kissed him the first night in front of the fire, without hesitation. _You will have to tell her, whatever the risk. She will not understand unless you do._

"It could be born with my face." Erik heard the beat of his blood pounding painfully in his ears as he waited for the inevitable request. Her brows drew quickly together in a shocked frown, a stain of uncertainty darkening her eyes like ink in water. _She will ask – there is no help for it now. She will ask for a reason, for a description, and finally she will demand to see for herself. You should have known this could not last – only a fool would think this could last for more than a few months. _

When she spoke her voice was very gentle, as if she were addressing the child already. "We would love it, surely, regardless."

He thought for a moment she had already gone mad.

"No, you would not –you might try harder than most, and it would only make it that much worse." In his mind's eye he saw the infant, a few months old perhaps, emaciated. Hunger and misery were painfully etched into its terrible, familiar features, and Erik hurriedly shoved the image out of his mind. "You – we –havetodo something before this goes any further." _Surely something can still be done –we just have to act now, while it is early…_

"We will _do_ nothing," Ella snapped, and Erik was startled to see that she started to cry, her arms wrapped tightly around her waist. "There will be a baby, I will be a mother, and I will love her as my mother loved me!"

_Her? _The idea of seeing his own features cursing a girl was so horrible he refused to think of it, relegating the gender safely back to an impersonal _it_. _It will be over – all these months lost, and an abandoned child left to die a lingering death of starvation without any hope of finding a nursemaid. What are the odds she could stay long enough for it to live? With all the other opportunities she could have, and without a priest or the law to force her to stay? _

_What are the odds it might have her face? Twenty-five, fifty, seventy-five? If it has her face, nothing is lost… she will not know, and it would all be the same. The illusion would live, and the baby with it…_

_If._

"You are right – there will be a baby, you will be a mother," he conceded, desperately. "But we cannot stay here – not with Anya leaving. You can't be far along – we could still make the trip if we leave by the end of the month. We will stay to the paved roads – it will be a longer journey with more towns, but with fast horses we can still be far away by the time they start looking for Anya and Peter. They will have to wait for the mud to clear from the smaller roads – the larger ones will be crawling with the Prince's men once he discovers them gone." Ella continued to cry, and he lied recklessly, trying to comfort her. "If we go before the baby quickens it has to be safe. Ask a doctor."

Her frown deepened, and he had the uneasy feeling that she had already done just that – and not liked the answer.

"The doctor agreed it would be safe," he pressed, and she nodded reluctantly. "Then it is settled.

"You are still not happy," she observed sadly.

He smiled as best he could, and hoped it was convincing. The motion felt more like a grimace. "You are pleased – and I am glad of it."

"It will be fine – you will see," she said bravely, and he had the impression she was trying to convince herself, as well as him. "It will all be fine."

Later that night Erik lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Ella lay beside him, partially over his arm. She had kissed him sweetly that night, making encouraging, hopeful remarks about the child and Paris as she drifted off to sleep. His arm had been slowing going numb ever since, sending sparks of pain flying up along the nerves. Erik ignored it.

_Eight months and it could all be over, less than a year after it began. How many days are left?_


	23. An Illusion to Protect

The work on the Prince's estate consumed the coming weeks, and Erik drew new prints until his fingers were stained with ink. The drawings were heavy – each stroke a dark and seething line. New blueprints, new calculations – a whole new plan, produced rapid-fire, for a wedding that would never happen.

_An estate you will never see._

Ella seemed determined to stay busy as well, packing and re-packing their small trove of belongings until there was nothing more to be done but lock up the trunks and call a cart for the shipping. Erik arrived home just after she had sent out the last box to find her standing, lost, in the middle of the parlor. A quick glance around and he understood. The pictures, rugs, and furniture were all the same as when they arrived; the house was almost identical to the day before. It were just a few, small changes: the collection of books Ella had accumulated on the top shelf of the parlor secretary, the pile of sketches and notebooks he had stored in the corner, the teapot missing from the kitchen table. Their absence gave an unexpected, disoriented feeling to the house – like turning to find a familiar face, and discovering a stranger instead. He turned away from the room, back to Ella.

"How is Mary?" he prompted, and Ella gave him a small, grateful smile.

"She is well. And feeling much better – her cold is nearly gone. She has promised to call soon and tell me about the sights to see in London. She is writing a letter of introduction for us to her sister."

Erik imagined the look on the unsuspecting sister's face, and let Mary's offer pass without comment. "And Anya?"

"She writes to complain about the cold, boredom, and her great-aunt's lap dog," Ella smiled wryly. "She should write novels – you would think she was the heroine of _The Mad Duke_ the way she describes it."

"How much longer is she in Moscow?"

"That is the worst of it – her mother is extending their visit, so she is trapped for several more weeks. It's for the best, though – it gives us more time."

"You will miss them."

Ella smiled wistfully. "I will. But, they have promised to write." She turned to face him, her eyes appraising. "Are you finished for the day?"

"Yes."

"Good! Change your coat – we have an appointment."

She refused to say more, shaking her head when he asked for details. They twisted through the streets of St. Petersburg in a rented coach, towards the center of the city until they came to a halt outside the back of a darkened building. Drab and blank, it gave no hint about their destination.

A few whispered words to the caretaker, and Ella was leading them both up a narrow flight of darkened stairs. A small door opened at the top to reveal rows of empty seats overlooking the stage of a theater. The cast was arranged below in various stages of costume, taking their places while the orchestra tuned instruments in a wild cacophony of sound.

The conductor took his place at the front of the orchestra, lifted his baton, and strains of Mozart rushed forward into the darkness like a wave, covering everything that lay in its path with beauty.

"Do you like it?" Ella demanded eagerly at intermission.

"It is beautiful." The sound seemed to linger in the theater, the air resonating with the energy of the music. Ella smiled, and he smiled back.

"I met the caretaker when I stopped to look at the theater earlier this week, and he offered to let us come tonight…after I tipped him, of course." She looked down at the stage, squinting at the conductor. "I wonder what he is saying?"

Erik focused on the conductor's muffled rant. "He is telling them that the brass is sharp…or the soprano is flat."

"Which is it?"

"Both. They will figure it out soon enough. It was the last stanza in the aria, midway through – the soprano stopped supporting the note, and the brass overwhelmed their part. See – the conductor is giving her an earful."

"Why don't you ever sing?" Ella asked unexpectedly, and for a moment Erik's mind ran back. The crowds of people scattered in front of a crude stage, the terrified mixture of resentment and dread, followed by the growing sense of power as the first note swelled to dominate the space and reduced them all to silence. Sometimes he began the song loudly, sometimes quietly, but always there was the undeniable power of music - a weapon that could keep them at bay. Their faces registered shock each time. _Whether by ugliness or by beauty, there was never anything normal about the reactions I conjured…_

"I sang too much once."

Her face darkened, surely remembering the Russian peasant, and the mask prickled on his face. He thought of other, earlier songs sung not as a weapon, but as a shield – an illusion to protect against the dark and the cold. "There is no need now. You could learn to sing, though – you have a nice voice."

"You are terribly biased," she accused, smiling but unconvinced by the small compliment. "Maybe in England, I could learn to play the piano..." She trailed off, then burst out, "Erik - I am sorry."

"What for?" Erik turned his attention resolutely back to the stage. _Late, _ the conductor was complaining, _The strings entered late. _Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ella follow his glance towards the orchestra pit, then return steadily to him.

"I have cost you your palace."

"The Prince is giving away palaces that don't exist," Erik said curtly. "The tsar is not building anything – he's too old."

"Still –"

"We have been planning to leave Russia since they day we came – you cannot be sorry for something that never was."

"It is still a loss."

"Not a real one."

The music rose again, and Erik welcomed the obliterating swell of sound as it washed over them and drowned out conversation.

_This was never more than a stopping place; a temporary pause. _

On the way home they talked about the music, the songs, and did not mention the upcoming journey. As he handed her down from the carriage, Ella stumbled slightly. She turned her face away, but he caught a glimpse of the way her skin turned ashen, teeth clenched until her jaw stood out in a grim line of pain.

"What is wrong?" he demanded immediately.

She caught his look guiltily, as if she had been hiding, and the grimace faded with a studied speed.

"Nothing – Mary says a little pain is normal in the beginning. I will catch my breath in a minute. There – it is gone now." She finished cheerfully, stubbornly, even with the shadows still in her eyes. "It is fine. It will be fine."


	24. Gone

**A/N: Thank you so much for the new favorites and follows!**

Erik went back to the Prince's estate through their last week in Russia, even though there was no real work to be done. Somehow each day seemed to end with a new task to finish up, some other loose string to capture for the idiot contractors who were sure to follow.

And it was easier than being in the house each day, seeing Ella's fearful hope.

He ended by sourcing the house's marble himself, crossing back and forth between the familiar sights and sounds of the stone yards. It was on the ride home that a shift in the crowd caught his eye – the back of a pedestrian melting abruptly into a deserted alley. Erik pulled his horse to a stop, earning the angry curses of the wagon behind him as he moved to follow the man. The stranger had seemed oddly familiar - and moved like someone trying to go unnoticed…

_He could be anyone_, Erik reminded himself as he jumped off the horse and slipped between the run-down buildings_. Some peasant Lukhov put on the trail, or a dock worker taking a shortcut. _ _But he did not move like a peasant thug… _

The alley was deserted, the only sign of life the scattering of multi-sized, smeared footprints left to set in the mud until the next rain. He followed the footprints through the alley, slipping through a fence into the small space beyond. A dingy yard dead-ended into another street, the footprints disappearing into the cobbles.

He retraced his steps quickly, trying to shake off the feeling of eyes as he remounted and directed the horse home.

_Lukhov would not try something so stupid again. And Mikhail is stalking Anya in Moscow…_

_It is nothing._

The thick, acrid smell of burning food hung in the air as Erik walked up to the house, and his hand shook as he fumbled with the key and unlocked the door. A pot smoked on the range in the kitchen, sending plumes of smoke into the surrounding rooms. Erik called Ella's name as he threw the pot outside into the melting snow, just catching the soft response that crept down the stairs. He took the steps two at a time, hurtling through the upstairs hall before skidding to a stop in Ella's bedroom.

It had been years since the sight of blood affected him – hell, at the Sultana's court he had even learned to stop noticing it. But now he stood frozen, unable to move or speak. Ella was crouched beside the bed, her hands white and clenched in the coverlets as if she had fallen there. Her gown was streaked in blood, pooling beneath her to stain her stockings and shoes. He watched in horror as she looked up, her face a grimaced mask of pain around flat eyes. Her lips formed the letters of his name, and suddenly the room was alive again, and his knees were unfrozen and scraping the ground as he fell forward to where she sat.

"What has happened? Where is the wound?" he demanded, catching the flickering pulse beneath the skin of her wrist with his fingers. _Too fast, to light… _His mind jumped frantically as he stood up and snatched some clean linen off of a dresser. Ella was shaking her head, her face contorted into a tearless sob.

_The baby…the baby._ She gasped brokenly through her pain, and Erik stared at her with dawning horror.

_This is not a wound – it is a hemorrhage. She is miscarrying. _

His head swam as he helped her lay down on the floor and pressed the linen against her, the blood staining the bright white sheets in a sickening crimson. His hands were red and slick as he stepped back, and his stomach began to twist as he stared at them. He looked away, burying his hands in the sheets. _Breathe – you have to breathe. And think! _"Stay here," he said, listening to his words echo stupidly in the small room. "Stay here. It is going to be fine."

Ella caught his hand, her fingers clenching like iron around his palm with a wave of pain. "Send the neighbor's boy… for the doctor… to save the baby," she pleaded, and he felt a hollow sensation twist sickeningly in his chest. He bent down to kiss her on her forehead, and felt the burning heat of her skin.

"I will send him, and be right back...stay still! Promise you will stay very still."

It was only when he stood out on the muddy street, staring wildly at the houses surrounding them that he realized he did not know the neighbors, or the boy. He was pounding wildly on the door across the street when he saw their own hired girl walk up to the house with a basket over her arm, gazing at him with mouth gaping open like a fish. A few running steps and he was sprinting across the road as she turned to flee with a shriek. He caught her by the arm, half pushing, half dragging her down the sidewalk as she noticed the blood and began to scream in earnest. She calmed only slightly when he said Ella's name, trembling as he ordered her to return with a doctor immediately. She bolted as soon as he released her, dropping her basket in her haste and tearing through the shrubs of the yard down the street. Erik watched her disappear, and desperately whispered the closest thing to a prayer he had said for years.

_For the love of God, let her be running for the doctor. _ _Please…you have to save her. _

_She doesn't deserve to die like this._

The bleeding only seemed worse when he returned to Ella, her face pale with pain and fear. In desperation he filled the bath tub with the cold water from the pump and all the ice he could find, and placed her in the freezing water to try to staunch the bleeding. Hours seemed to pass before the doctor arrived, lifetimes as Erik watched Ella's lips turn blue, listened to himself mumble wild, incoherent promises and beg them in return.

Late at night, when it was over, the doctor announced condescendingly that the hemorrhage had been a 'small' one - puffed up with pleasure in his own skill, and peering curiously at the mask as he packed up his bag. The doctor's voice careened distantly off the walls of the foyer as Erik stared down at the bloody stains creeping up the arms of his shirt. _It was white this morning…_

Erik had the mad thought that it could not be real: the doctor was an illusion, or maybe he himself was an illusion, an opium-fueled delirium, but the events of the last few hours could not be true. _She was fine the day before…_

"I will return tomorrow morning," the doctor was droning on, still lingering in the door. "Around 10 o'clock. Send the girl if she takes a turn, but she should be fine from here – just weak." He repeated his words for some unknown reason, and then the door shut behind him and the house was entirely still.

Erik walked woodenly back up the stairs to Ella's bedroom. The fire crackled softly in the corner, and the terrified maid shot up immediately from the chair beside the bed and bobbed a curtsey before edging around him and fleeing out the door. Ella was sleeping, the red mixture of blood and water still in the bath, the stained towels still strewn across the floor. In the middle of this war zone she lay very small and still, almost pristine on the large bed. Her face was still drawn from the earlier pain, but her chest rose and fell evenly now under the ease of the doctor's morphine. Erik thought of the drug with longing – the smooth, welcoming warmth, just enough to blur the edges of the day, to fight the images of Ella's blood-soaked body as it had dulled other memories.

_Always blood. It follows me everywhere – even here, in this room._

"Erik?" Ella interrupted his thoughts with a whisper from the depths of the bed. Her voice sounded frail and drowsy with weakness, and he knew what her next words would be. "What did he say about the baby?"

"You should sleep," he asked her sadly. _The doctor wouldn't tell you - don't make me drag it out into the open now. You are just barely saved yourself. _She struggled to prop herself up on her elbows, pinning him with red-rimmed eyes until he gave in. "Lay down – you will hurt yourself. I'm sorry, Ella - it is gone."

He tried to make the words gentle, but they sounded stark and cold in the darkened room. Ella nodded – a small hint of a movement as she collapsed silently into the pillows and closed her eyes. Erik sat down in the chair next to the bed, and did not sleep. The morning dawned late and cold – he realized later that the fires had gone out during the night, one by one, except for the one in Ella's bedroom.


	25. A La Claire Fontaine

The maid was gone – the door locked neatly behind her as if she had never been there at all. Erik cursed her, first in French, then in Russian as he coaxed a fire out of the dead coals in the kitchen stove. He found the tea kettle in the sink, and reached to rinse it out when he caught sight of his stained shirt. He ripped it off, wadding it up and shoving it into the stove with a slam of the iron door. The white cotton burst into flames, sending fingers of fire up through the burners.

A soft rapping came from the front door, and he glanced at the kitchen clock before returning to the sink. _Only 8 o'clock – too early for the doctor. _ He washed out the kettle and filled it with water, then ran back upstairs to check on Ella. She was curled up in the bed, her head buried in her arms. He watched the reassuring rise and fall of her shoulders for a few moments. In the early morning light she almost looked normal –lost in the comforter, her hair spilling over the pillow. On any other day, she might have looked up and smiled, and held out her hands…

He gave her one last look before edging silently out of the room and walking to his own. The knocking resumed, louder now, and he pulled on a new shirt with a violent snap as he walked back down the stairs. Erik flung open the front door to find Mary Whitcomb standing primly on the porch, a maid cowering behind her.

"I came to see Ella," Mary announced without preamble. Her brows knitted together with alarm as she stared at his disheveled clothing.

"She is not well," he said curtly, and started to shut the door.

"I know – your maid came by this morning with the message. I came to sit with her." Mary looked him squarely in the eye, her chin rising. "I sent for a nurse, as well – the doctor was a fool not to send one last night."

She stood firmly in place until Erik relented, reluctantly standing back to let her inside. They walked up to Ella's room in silence. The room looked exactly as it had the night before, littered with towels and linen, and Erik heard Mary click her tongue as she surveyed the area. The maid began to speak, a sharp whine of alarm that rang through the silence like metal scraping across rock. Mary cut her off, her voice as matter of fact as ordering a wrap at a ball. "You may run down, Riva, and set up the breakfast things. Bring up broth, tea…and some toast to begin. You may tidy the room when Lenka returns." Mary placed her coat and hat over the top of a dresser, and moved to the bed as Ella struggled up onto her elbows. Erik raised his hands in apology, but Ella's eyes were glued on Mary. "Ella, darling," Mary crooned, her eyes wet as she took Ella's outstretched hand in her own. "Poor child, what a fright you have had."

"The baby is _gone_," Ella chocked out, the words tumbling one on top of another in an ugly jumble. Erik slipped out of the room, unable to watch her face as she began to tearfully tell the story. Mary's response followed him out into the hall, her voice soft with pity.

"I know, dear – I know. I am so sorry. You must be careful, though – we nearly lost you, too."

_She is right - it nearly killed you_, he agreed silently. He continued the argument in his mind, blocking out Ella's description of the previous day. _I am glad it is gone – relieved. You nearly died – and for what? Something you would have hated in the end. You would have hated both of us in the end…_

Ella's voice broke as she continued her story, and Erik looked down at his hands and saw they were balled up in fists at his sides. The maid had returned, looking at him strangely as she balanced a tray of steaming cups in her hands.

"What?" he hissed as she cleared her throat and shifted from one foot to the other.

"I … I was just wondering if maybe you might want to rest while Mrs. Whitcomb is here?" She shifted from foot to foot, her eyes falling to the carpet. "If you would care to wait with Mrs. Whitcomb, where it is warm, I can make up the fire…"

He put her out of her misery, turning on his heel towards his bedroom. "No."

Erik paced back and forth before the empty grate in his room as he tried to quell the voices bubbling up from the past. Ella's hope for the baby and her tears raked through his thoughts like an accusation. _It could have been fine – it could have had her face, and she would be healthy and safe, and happy. _

_It should have had her face – and instead it nearly killed her. _

He tried to hate the poor creature, but could not find the anger; he tried to mourn it, and could not imagine it as a living, breathing reality. In the end he broke a candle in two pieces, and set them up on the mantle that stood against the wall of Ella's room. He lit them slowly, watching the flame flicker to life before reaching skyward in long tendrils of light.

A high, crystalline voice drifted back from the past, slipping between the lights before he could push it back.

_Demon – you will be the death of her._

Mary came each day like clockwork.

Anya wrote, and promised to call as soon as she returned to St. Petersburg.

The Prince sent his condolences and a renewed offer for a contract. Erik accepted it quietly. Anya or no Anya, they could not leave now. The doctor had forbidden the journey.

The doctor said she would recover soon – a few months, more or less. He was fast to predict it after the first week, in spite of – or perhaps because of – Ella's awful silences. After all, she was young, healthy. There was no excuse, he admonished her gruffly, not to be well. "Put it behind you as quickly as possible. There is no reason you could not have another. In time, perhaps."

She had thanked him mechanically, but Erik found her crying later in the dark. The sound struck him like a fist - the fact that her tears were muffled, hidden making them all the more horrible.

"Ella." He winced at how flat his voice sounded to his own ears. It had always done his bidding: concealing, revealing, and changing on command for a thousand pointless performances. And now it seemed to belong to someone else entirely. "Don't cry - please… you will make yourself sick."

"It is my fault," she whispered miserably. Her breath came in ragged, spasming gasps, and when she looked up her eyes and face were swollen and distorted from tears. "It was my job to keep her safe, and…"

Her face seemed to crumple, disintegrate like an illusion at a fair into a mask of misery. She bent forward at the waist, burying her whole face into the bedclothes. Erik listened as the words hung in the air, twisting with the silent, misplaced condemnation.

_The Daroga would have seen her safely home. If you took her out of Persia, you were supposed to protect her. _

_But you haven't, have you?_

_Not really. _

"There was nothing you could have done. You could have died. You almost did." He eased onto his knees next to the bed, but she did not look at him. In desperation he sang for her, very lowly, repeating the simple melody over and over until she stopped crying. When she finally spoke, she sounded tired.

"They were right," she observed detachedly. "You have a gift."

"I have a curse." The silence stretched on through the dark, and he said the only thing left he could think of. "I am sorry, Ella."

"I loved her – I would have loved her…even if you could not."

He said the only thing he could. "I know."

**A/N: Thank you for taking time to read, and for the follows & reviews! **


	26. Rome

"I know."

His tone was soft, without a hint of challenge, protest, or conviction.

_I know_.

_A platitude to calm a sick child._

_But it was true – it is still true. I loved her…_

Mary insisted there was no mistake, no misstep. _Nothing you could have done, or not done_, she had said firmly. _Only God can do anything that early – it was just not meant to be. _

Ella replayed Mary's words over and over again as she lay in bed, pulling at raw edges of the past until the old wounds reopened and spread like a fever through her mind. The pain of it took her breath away. Her stomach ached with the leftover pangs of the botched birth, and she felt gutted, empty – as though her very heart had been scraped away from her chest, leaving a hollow shell in its place _The baby, Mother, Father. _

_None of them 'meant to be'. _

Erik was still kneeling by the bed, waiting – collected, remote compared to her own roiling pain. The few inches between them seemed like worlds of distance. _He does not understand._ _I do not understand_.

"_I know,"_ he said, but it was a lie.

_He never believed you._

She squinted in the dark, searching for his eyes, but they were lost in the shadows of the mask. A crushing weight of loneliness closed off her throat, and she choked back a new wave of tears.

The song he sang was a familiar one – an old French song, a lullaby from her childhood nearly forgotten until the strains of the melody bloomed in the dark. The notes brought the smallest details of the past back with them in a rush - the dim light of the candle in her nursery, the smooth pull of the brush through her hair as her nurse tied it in a loose braid for the night. Her mother's warm, comforting voice as she pulled up coverlets and said good night, and the dream-like security of going to sleep safe, and knowing the next day would begin and end exactly the same as the day before. Erik's voice seemed to fill the empty room with an other-worldly beauty – as exquisite and immediate as memory itself, with all its capacity for joy and sorrow woven together into one hushed sound. She pulled towards the music, this one common thread that had reached out to bind them together across grief and the night.

"My nurse taught me that lullaby," she said softly. "Where did you learn it?"

The question had caught him off guard – she could tell by the way his hands stilled on top of the bedclothes. When he spoke there was no music in his voice - his words were careful, revealing nothing. "I learned it in France."

"From whom?"

"No one."

"Who?" she pleaded, the question stretching in front of her in needy tendrils of sound, clutching, grasping in the dark. "It is a beautiful song – someone must have taught it to you."

"What do you want, Ella?" he asked, and his voice was no longer distant. It was clotted with some unnamed emotion, and he pulled his hands back to his sides. "It is a song - I know a thousand others."

"Why did you choose it? Why that one? Tell me why, please…who taught it to you?"

He was crouched on the back of his heels now, eyes wary, as if he were poised to escape. "You should sleep – it is late."

"I cannot sleep – I cannot dream that dream again." She heard the keening words escape into the room, and could not stop them though her cheeks burned. _No wonder he sang a lullaby.. you sound as ridiculous as a child. _She felt the tears prickle hotly against the back of her eyes, and closed them tight. She had wanted so badly to sleep that day – to close her eyes and escape into the flickering darkness that clouded and blurred the corners of the room. But the cold would not release her - the ice had held her in its biting grip, and Erik had been kneeling like this, wide-eyed on the sodden floor before her, his words running too fast for her to comprehend anything but the terror in his voice. And she had no choice but to stay, to cling to the jarring music of his voice like a lifeline, until the cold and pain had receded and left only emptiness and silence in their place.

"What do you dream?" His eyes were flat and unreadable, his mouth a thin line.

"I dream the baby lived," she offered the words up like a confession before the blank wall of his silence. "When I close my eyes I see the blood, but when I dream I see the baby – alive. And then I wake up, and I remember."

He was quiet for a long time, and she waited in the silence, letting it open up, grow around them both.

"I don't know any stories to stop nightmares," he said finally, although it was not a nightmare. "And there is nothing I can tell you about that song, or about France that would give you better dreams. I know the song because my mother's neighbor had two children, whom she loved. She sang to them each night, and when the windows were open and the breeze was just right sometimes I could hear her. I used to sit beneath the attic window and listen." He stopped here, his mouth twisting into a humorless half-smile. "The funny thing is, looking back, she didn't even have a particularly good voice. But it doesn't matter, either way, because there is nothing else worth telling."

"That's it then – pretend it never happened? Just forget it all?"

He laughed suddenly, a mirthless rasp of air that made her wince.

"If we could forget, we would not have to pretend."

"I don't know how to do either."

He looked at her, eyes hooded under the shadows of the mask. A beat passed, as if some unspoken argument had been weighed and decided, and he spoke evenly, oddly calm.

"Have I ever told you about Rome?"

He continued without waiting for an answer, looking down at his hands. His fingers shone white in the dim fire glow, rubbing over and over against his wrist. His voice was detached, as if he were reciting a page from a text memorized long ago. "The ancient Romans, they were famous for their architecture. All across Europe, into the outer edges of their empire, they built roads and bridges that are still working today. Think – thousands of years ago, those bridges were just a drawing, an idea in someone's head. And they built them so well, so carefully, that even after the people who made them are long dead the stonework is still there, still used, still admired. And those are just the roads, the work-a-day masonry. The architects who built the temples and public buildings are still remembered by name, still the first reading for every architecture student across the world." He switched topics without warning, his voice picking up speed. "After I left the gypsies the first time – before Russia - I lived with a mason. He found me at the fairs." Ella listened uneasily as he paused for the first time in this in this strange recital, as if he were measuring his words, weighing and discarding them before settling on a string of compromises. Like a task that had to be done – an accounting to be completed as quickly as possible, regardless of pain or cost.

_A penance._

"Erik, stop - I didn't mean – I didn't want -"

She reached out to touch him, but he ignored her hand, moving out of her reach as he continued. "He paid my way out from the gypsy camp – and the price wasn't small. You could buy a horse then for what he paid, and he paid it in silver. He said no one should have to live there. I was pretty young, then, so I guess I didn't look like much of a threat. He didn't have any children, his wife had died years before, and he didn't have a plan in mind for where to send me after he paid the gypsies. He took me back to his house. I picked up Italian the weeks after, while he was trying to figure out what to do with me. One day he asked me what my father had done. When I told him, he asked what I knew about masonry. I knew nothing, but I could read and I had picked up some math. He said that masonry ran in the blood – that it was an inheritance. He taught me architecture, stonework. Eventually he took me with him to his worksites – he taught me everything he knew."

"He was fond of you," Ella said, beginning to relax, to smile in relief, but Erik shook his head.

"He needed an apprentice – someone to draw out the designs and do the heavy lifting. I stayed in the basement, so I wouldn't bother him. I did all the chores I could find. I didn't talk to anyone more than I had to at the sites, so he wouldn't regret bringing me. And one day he took me to Rome, and showed me the architecture. "

He stopped and looked at her expectantly until she realized he was waiting for, demanding, the final question.

"Why did you leave?" she asked reluctantly. He smiled then, a cold flash of confirmation, and continued. "A new mason came and joined the work crew. He asked about the mask whenever anyone would listen, until everyone else asked, too. Signor was old, but didn't stop him from threatening to fire them all – as if he could. One day I made a mistake – I lingered behind at the site at the end of the day, and did not pay enough attention to the others. You can guess what happened next… it was lucky for me they had a bit of a shock when the mask came off. They forgot to keep their grip, and I caught the largest one in the nose with my fist. I started running as soon as I got on my feet. And I never went back."

"Where did you go?" Ella whispered.

"Back to the fairs. It was the only other place I knew. " He dragged his eyes up to her face now, the story complete, his eyes cold and empty. The story lurked between them, hidden again in the silence. Ella knew he would not tell it again.

"Erik…" she whispered, arguing futilely against events that took place years ago, had been over for more than a decade. Her hand crept towards him, then stopped. His shoulders were straight and squared, his entire body held rigidly apart from her. "He must have looked for you," she said helplessly.

A flash of pain darted through his eyes. "Then I did him a great service."


	27. Balanced on Air

The White Nights had just begun when Ella made her first tentative excursions outside, and found herself in a city transformed. The streets were alive with people, filling the promenades and sidewalks to celebrate the sun's short season of triumph. It was like nothing she could have imagined - inroads of gold illuminating the sky into a sea of blue and turquoise long past midnight, the day's hours stretched out luxuriously in the warm air. Old and young thronged the promenades, and the court carried its parties into the country in a lavish rush to capture the light. The entire city seemed to buzz with the delirious, surreal rush of the summer.

The regiments returned to St. Petersburg during these golden days, and Peter along with them. Ella walked with Mary to watch the army and cavalry drill on the parade grounds. All around, the military and aristocracy glittered with the pomp and regalia of the Russian crown. The senior officers drilled their ranks proudly in front of the crowds - the bright reflection of swords and the gleam of medals and gold braid dazzling the audience. The officers brightened the summer gardens and house parties of the court, turned out in their sleek dress uniforms. Mary reported new engagements each week, relating a steady stream of details surrounding the ins and outs of the court's new romances and liaisons. Anya's mother kept her wisely away from St. Petersburg, visiting a cousin to the south.

Without Anya or the parties of the Winter Court, the days passed with a smooth sameness. Ella spent mornings with Mary, taking meandering strolls down the sunny, open streets. Mary promised the fresh air would bring back her health, and sent her home with boxes of patent medicines for good measure. Erik dumped them all out one night despite Ella's protests, with a tirade against ignorant doctors, confidence men, and poison in fancy bottles. If Mary wanted to kill her, he said curtly, she would have to do it outright.

When the patch of grass receiving the full benefit of the medicines shriveled and died, Ella reluctantly conceded that he might have a point.

Ground was broken on the Prince's estate as soon as the spring mud dried, and a work crew hired. Erik would only speak briefly about the crew – they were good enough, was his terse verdict, for the task at hand but none too disciplined. They were all replaced one day soon after the start of the project, when he came home in the middle of the afternoon with a large bruise to his shoulder.

"A retaining wall failed," he explained with gritted teeth when Ella asked what had happened. "I cannot stay. I have to hire a new crew."

"Where the men injured?" she asked, worried. A falling wall could kill a man easily, crushing them beneath the massive foundation stones. Erik gave her a veiled look as he accepted the ice she prepared for him, settling it gingerly on the purpling bruise.

"No – I fired all them for incompetence."

He returned home that night and the following nights with a sharp edge to his jaw, and Ella realized there was much about his days he chose not to share.

She asked to see the site of the new house instead, and he took her one evening by carriage to see a large pit in the ground. The stones fitted carefully into the dark earth below the frost line, solid and precise in their orderly lines.

"It is very nice," she said diplomatically, and he turned and gave her a long look before his mouth flickered up at the corner.

"It does not look like much for all these weeks, does it? But it will not heave – that foundation is solid enough for another ice age. Winter be damned," he finished with the familiar flash of arrogance.

He turned to her and smiled, and she found herself smiling, beaming back, her entire being warm and breathless in relief. He continued on the topic, the calculations and reinforcements, the drainage and ditches that would keep those critical stones secure in their place. She watched his hands move in the light, gesturing to the different parts of the stonework and listened to the rise and fall of his voice against the music of the birch leaves. He spoke as he always did - going over the ins and outs with careful detail, turning to see if she understood the reasoning behind it as if it were important that she should know each piece, each part.

When he turned to her, pausing to map out a cantilever in midair, she impulsively rose up on her toes to brush a whisper of a kiss across his mouth. The edge of the mask brushed against her cheek, and she held his gaze as she sank back down off her toes.

"I like to hear about the house," was all she could say in response to the question in his eyes.

He looked at her for a moment with a look she could not read, then leaned down and returned the kiss until they were both flushed and breathless beneath that bright blue sky. His mouth was warm upon hers, achingly familiar and dear. But he kissed her as though the moment were fragile – as though they were both balanced on air, like the plans of the house sketched into the sky.

They drove back late in the evening in the lazy half-light. Even past midnight the town wore the brilliant colors of an icon – the gilt of the sun hanging low in the sky, the houses reflecting the red and pink light against the cobalt water and emerald trees. The promenades were beginning to empty, the masses of people sleepily drifting home with faces flushed from drink and heat. They were nearly home when Erik went still and tense beside her.

"What is it?" she asked softly, keeping her face open and pleasant, and calm mask over the surge of panic that raced through her like ice. She scanned the crowd quickly, but saw nothing but the normal mill of pedestrians crowding the sidewalks. The city drew visitors from across the country in the summer – merchants, day laborers, and people of every class visiting relatives in these brief months when travel was so easy. A few officers from a regiment she did not recognize loafed on a corner, and down the road a group of young men had started to sing a drinking song, interrupting each other with shouts and toasts. Erik turned to her immediately with a shrug and a half smile, the lines of his hands and mouth carefully relaxed as if nothing had happened. "No one, of course – just a drunk on a corner. You said Anya was out in the country?"

"Yes – her mother took her to her cousin's estate.

He nodded, but this time his eyes betrayed him as he scanned the crowd. "Good."

When she woke early the next morning he was already gone, out to the building site.

**I have no idea why these chapters seem so hard to write, but I am so grateful to everyone who continues to read along with me, and to the new follows, favorites, and reviews! You all make my day : ) **


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